Graves, Release Your Dead (Svart Records) is the latest album from Finland’s vampire-admiring (maybe “obsessed” is the word) The Coffinshakers. According to the band’s online blurb, they’ve been making horror comedy since 1995. Now if that feels like rather a long time to be riding this fairly simple gimmick, well it’s just a fleeting moment for a night walker, eh?
Since the music of Baroness has been unlike any other band to me, and more akin to a spiritual experience since I first got into them in 2007, I set the mood for myself before listening. I turned the lights down low, cracked the window open to get a nice breeze going, and heard the sound of large late summer raindrops filling my ears. The city’s heartbeat in the deep background was the only other sound besides my breathing. I just stared at the new album artwork for five straight minutes. At peace for a change, in the still and calm of myself, and by chance, present in the city of my birth for a few days, I hit play on the promo and then let the first notes hit me.
Singer-songwriter Ora Cogan, based in Vancouver Island, has been creating and releasing “cinematic compositions” since 2007. Her ninth album, Formless (Prism Tongue Records), presents a “bizarre sonic Venn diagram” of influences including gothic country, psychedelia, post-punk and more, according to the accompanying press release.
Jaye Jayle is effectively the solo project of Evan Patterson, and Don’t Let Your Love Life Get You Down (Pelagic Records) is his first offering since his divorce from Emma Ruth Rundle — a topic which seems to have informed both the title and the content of this new record.
Black Duck can best be described as a supergroup featuring as it does key members of the Chicago music scene such as guitarist/bassist Douglas McCombs (Tortoise, Eleventh Dream Day), guitarist Bill MacKay (Broken Things, Sounds of Now), and drummer Charles Rumback (Colorlist, Leaf Bird). I confess to only really being familiar with McCombs due to his involvement in those bands who I’ve listened to for a number of years and hence why my interest was peaked when selecting this album for review purposes.
There’s something romantic and cinematic about adopted New Jersey (via Norway) songwriter Luke Elliot’s third album, Let ‘em All Talk (Icons Creating Evil Art) over and above the wistful storytelling. ‘I (Who Have Nothing)’, all film-noir meets spaghetti western vibes with its orchestral flecks, feels torn from an as-yet-unwritten Tarrantino follow-up to Django Unchained, or perhaps the lead single to the debuting next James Bond, while ‘William Tell’ could have been one of the musical interludes from Black Mariah’s club in Luke Cage (Netflix version).
Not even a year on from his last full-length album, The Atheist and Jamie Lenman is back with yet more music. Acting as a companion EP to the aforementioned album, IKnowYouKnowIKnow (Big Scary Monsters) features some of the tracks that didn’t fit in with the theme and sound of The Atheist, allowing Lenman to truly showcase some of the varieties of influences that went into the sound of this phase of his career. What can this additional release add to the package that was his previous album?
There is a rich tradition of Doom musicians releasing stripped-back acoustic affairs as the likes of Scott Weinrich, Tony Reed, and Mike Scheidt can attest to. Windhand‘s Dorthia Cottrell is no exception and Death Folk Country (Relapse Records) marks her second solo effort to date following a self-titled debut in 2015.
Reminiscence (Eisenwald Records) is the first full-length album from Germany’s Ellereve (the alias of singer-songwriter Elisa Giulia Teschner), following an EP and several singles.
Gem (Avantgarde Music) is the debut album from Italy’s Bosco Sacro, a band formed in 2020 by seasoned contributors to the Italian and European underground heavy music scene.