Arctic Sleep, an atmospheric doom/sludge band from Milwaukee, WI, is running a kickstarter for their 5th album, Passage of Gaia, to be released in September. I quite liked their previous releases, so I thought I'd mention this campaign here for those of you interested (I pledged as well).

You can listen to their previous albums on their Bandcamp.

 

A psychedelic soundtrack for your weekend - Causa Sui

On my daily commute to and from work I like to immerse myself in some instrumental psychedelic rock to take me away from the surroundings and a great way to achieve that is through the wonderful and vast output of Danish band, Causa Sui. Heavy, hypnotic and beautiful, their music has a magical appeal for me, that sound that captivates me and teleports me away as I listen to it.
 

  Spotify

Announcement/Disclosure: I am not back and not reviewing

As I wrote in the first post in over two years that you can see down below, I am not back.

I've gotten quite a lot of emails in the last week asking me to review and write about bands/albums/videos/etc. So to save you the time of writing to me and save my time replying to all these emails, here's the announcement:

I won't be writing reviews, I won't be taking review requests, I won't be doing any of the coverage I did previously in this blog. I will simply post random posts here and there when I have the time and inclination to do so. I will post on whatever is on my mind at that point - maybe I heard a song I really liked, just gotten a new album and loved it, need to share some of my enthusiasm about an obscure album.

The reason I can't go full time back is lack of time (and energy). I wish I could, as there's lots of great music I keep on discovering.

Hope all those who wrote in can appreciate this and I wish you the best with your music.

AV

Keeping in somewhat with the musical theme of the past few posts, today's band is in a similar ballpark. It's the new s/t album by The Oath, out on, not surprisingly, Rise Above Records this past March. This is straight forward good old fashioned heavy-metal, psychedelic and gritty sounding with female vocals. Judging by this track alone, I want to listen to the whole thing.

Some more psychedelic rock to end the week: Walrus - Walrus (2013)

Another discovery I had in 2013 was this Swedish group (with Mattias Olsson from Änglagård) playing psychedelic/kraurock/progressive rock. There's a terrific use of the various instruments here, the violin and keyboards provide a haunting atmosphere as the propulsive rhythm section follows up with their counteracting piece, all together achieving a dynamic and beautiful album.

Mount Salem - Endless (Metal Blade, 2014)

After Purson (The Circle and the Blue Door), New Keepers of the Water Towers (Cosmic) and Blaak Heat Shujaa (The Edge of an Era) last year, I get my psych/stoner itch rubbed again this year with Mount Salem's release Endless, released through Metal Blade records.

While nothing new, this is solid heavy, retro-sounding psychedelic rock with female vocals.
Here's the official release from this album, Lucid:

New Cormorant album, Earth Diver, out on April 8th, 2014

New Cormorant album coming out next week, their first one post-Arthur von Nagel. The two songs available for streaming on their bandcamp sound very good, give it a try.

Read an album review on Invisible Oranges.