Jarboe: "The House Of Void"

It’s mid-August, and it’s cold in Denver. It’s been raining for something like 34 hours straight. I spent the bulk of that time locked in my condo, listening to Jarboe and her myriad projects, incarnations, and collaborations with buddies and underground metal all-stars such as Swans, Justin K. Broadrick of Jesu, and Neurosis.

My mood has been affected accordingly. The creaks in my house have taken on a menacing air; there’s intelligence in the light around me; I’m seeing colors; I’m remote-viewing back to weird, old-world landscapes; I just awoke from a dream about choking, and I’m deep in the throes of a particularly penetrating sweat. I need to get out of here. I think that my neighbors will be the largest beneficiaries of that move; my walls are thick, but they’re not Jarboe thick.

Following this kind of strangeness, it helps to think on some touchstones that are grounded in the commonality of it all. It’s 2008, and the Olympics are on; the Democratic National Convention will be rolling into town soon; war is not yet obsolete; mankind is still uncovering new ways to hate our differences with medieval aplomb; Jarboe is right back in the thick of a wicked, resurgent metal scene.

The avant-garde songstress says, with palpable excitement in her voice, that “throwing myself into the void, pushing myself hard, pushing myself to exhaustion — that’s what drives me. That’s why I like loud, aggressive music. That’s how I’m wired!”

She is a woman who seems hyperactively aware of those moment-to-moment changes that shape her consciousness, which extend past her art and music. She is straight-edge, practices extreme boxing, and her hands are callused from carrying her own equipment. She has refused to accept the role of novelty act in the very masculine world of metal.

"My artistic base is grounded in Swans. It’s how I was refined; it’s how I adjusted; it’s how I developed. It was such a big part of my life. I could never turn my back on that.”

But perhaps most telling are the actions that led her into the grips of the early ’80s New York no-wave scene. Upon hearing Michael Gira’s band, Swans, she set out for New York City with the sole intention of joining the band. Gira started her off on bass, but she was quickly recognized as an artistic force, and with vocal, keyboard, and songwriting contributions, she helped to shape the unique, heavy sound in one of that era’s most important underground metal acts.

Gira and Jarboe closed shop on Swans over a decade ago, but Jarboe remains lightning-eyed and howling. Her sounds are best not described from any clinical standpoint, as one could get lost in a string of descriptive words that don’t necessarily do justice to the tactility of her work (Old Testament-informed post-industrial dirge, a cross between yodeling and church-worship chorusing, etc.).

Jarboe’s works are temporal, as heavily influenced by current experience as they are informed by her Swans days. As such, it’s better to swoop in from above with general ideas about what she’s doing in the present that continues to drive her towards the extreme ends of multimedia art and music.

The physical representation of her sound is a good place to start; Jarboe has a history of intense cover art and intimidating album names. Her 2004 release, Anhedoniac, featured edgy, limited-edition, Wal-Mart-repellent nudes taken by Richard Kern. The most accessible of these depicts her naked and devoid of pigment, holed up in a cell and clawing at the bars on a window. As she explains, “It’s what I’ve done as a performance artist that led to my work with audio experimentations, feedback, and multi-track delays. It cracked me open to hear sounds in a different way; it shifted things to where I didn’t need a traditional melody.”

Her second release of 2008, Mahakali (following J2, a collaboration with Broadrick), continues in this vein, although the concept contributes heavily to the depth of the album. The cover is an animation-enhanced photo of Jarboe posing in a particularly threatening portrayal of the Hindu goddess Mahakali. Though traditional portraits show the goddess with a lolling tongue, Jarboe assured me that every muscle in her head contributed to the considerable tongue length in that shot, quipping through her faded Southern drawl that “it definitely gives you a greater appreciation for the talents of Gene Simmons.”

Mahakali herself lends a weighty contextual element to the sound of the album. The goddess is associated with the dichotomies of annihilation and creation, time and change. For Jarboe, this is an apt symbol for the state of the planet — politically, environmentally, and otherwise. It’s alternately a tragic concession of what needs to happen to move forward and a condemnation of those events that got us here. The goddess is often depicted as having many faces — a concept that flows volcanically through Jarboe’s work and life.

She uses the term “flexible reality” to describe the different phases, faces, and personas of her post-Swans act as The Living Jarboe. Sonically, she seems to toe the line of every diagnosable personality disorder as she weaves easily digested harmonies, Swans-esque industrial churn, a string section, and most notably, an arc of rangy vocals into her unique vision of black metal (“rangy” is perhaps not the word here, but I defy you to tell me what that word is).

Like some Wiccan version of Tom Waits, she uses her voice as an instrument that can be bent across the full spectrum of sound and style. The opening track on Mahakali, “Mahakali, of Terrifying Countenance,” has a techno-erotic paganism that bares no resemblance to the smoky sound that opens “The House of Void.” Somewhere in that track, her voice cuts sharply through the fog, only to become indistinguishable from what could be either a squealing guitar or her own manic shriek.

This awareness of her multifaceted personae is a condition that might explain her propensity to collaborate. As a serial collaborator, her sound tends to ricochet as it bumps up against the experiences of other artists. On Mahakali, Jarboe has recruited an impressive roster of talent to help shape the different faces of the album.

In a manner completely opposite of the across-the-ocean, file-sharing collaboration with Broadrick, she brought into the studio members of Dysrhythmia, Neurosis, Antony and the Johnsons (not Antony), Unsane, Amber Asylum, former Swans drummer Vinny Signorelli, Attila Csihar of Mayhem, and most strikingly, Phil Anselmo of Pantera.

She had the idea to insert Anselmo into an environment that is seemingly caustic to his black-metal personae. It works. His vocals on “Overthrown” are the howling, emotional core of the album. Anselmo’s voice here is as raw as red meat, but a cello is layered underneath, and a soulful harmony surfaces from beneath his otherwise tough sound. Backed by some aggressive acoustic bullying, the track is a rugged, Southern-gothic roar.

For all her faces, Jarboe remains existentially rooted in those days spent pioneering with Swans. In fact, Child of Swans was the working title for this new album. “The Swans were my education,” she says. “It altered the way I hear sound permanently. My artistic base is grounded in Swans. It’s how I was refined; it’s how I adjusted; it’s how I developed. It was such a big part of my life. I could never turn my back on that.”

Neurosis: "To Crawl Under One's Skin"

Earlier this year, pioneering sludge-metal band Neurosis reissued its third studio album, Souls at Zero, on its own label, Neurot. Though it sounds just as fresh today, it has been nearly 20 years since that influential mixture of heavy grooves, diverse folk instrumentation, and mammoth metal riffs first cropped up. We asked frontman Steve Von Till to compile a playlist for us, and he came up with 11 bands that were instrumental in Neurosis' formation and development.

Bands Integral to the Origin of Neurosis
by Steve Von Till of Neurosis

This playlist may contain the secrets to the origin of thousands of bands who became inspired to give it all.

1. Joy Division: "New Dawn Fades"

The driving bass. The melodic yet primitive guitar. The empty and bleak space as large as the riff. The words, “Me, seeing me this time, hoping for something else.” The emotions left behind.

2. Black Flag: My War (side B)

"Nothing Left Inside," "Three Nights," and "Scream." Slow dirge and discordant angst…perfection.

3. Amebix: "Last Will and Testament"

No Gods, No Masters, and yet a spiritual thread runs through its music. Punks informed by Crass and Killing Joke but armed with mysticism and huge metal guitars. We owe a lot to these men.

4. Pink Floyd: "Careful With That Axe Eugene" (Live at Pompeii version)

Man…that scream…I swear Roger Waters looks like he is about to transform into some beast during that performance. Heavy psych at its best.

5. Die Kreuzen: "All White"

Dissonant guitars, insane, augmented chords, melodic bass, and that voice! “Let me out!!!!!!!!”

6. Voivod: "Tribal Convictions"

Along with Die Kreuzen, Piggy (Denis D'Amour) from Voivod blew our minds with the insane, dissonant chord shapes. Psychedelic metal from space. Truly one of a kind. We miss you, Piggy.

7. Rudimentary Peni: Cacophony (entire record)

A band considered to be a group of art-damaged anarcho-punks comes out of nowhere with a completely bizarre, hypnotic masterpiece dedicated and inspired by the life of HP Lovecraft. This may be one of the strangest rock records of all time.

8. Killing Joke: "The Wait"

Even though it is overplayed thanks to a cover by an arena-rock band, it cannot detract from the fact that this track from its first record is heavy as hell — a badass new-wave anthem. Killing Joke is still intense and passionate. Huge inspiration.

9. Deep Purple: "Highway Star"

Harmonic distortion. This is what the human ear finds pleasing. I can think of no other sound that personifies those words more than this era of Deep Purple. Before I knew much about music, I thought it was Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar that was responsible for the thick, rich, tough wall of sound, but as I got older, I thought, “No, it must be Jon Lord’s distorted organ that is so heavy.” Finally I had the moment of clarity; it is the magic blend of the Hammond B3’s foldback distortion with the Stratocaster and Rickenbacker through dimed stacks of '60s Marshalls that is so damn good. My quest for my guitar tone has been chasing that ever since.

10. The Subhumans: "From the Cradle to the Grave"

The title says it all. An absolute epic of musicianship and depth of lyrics that stands leagues beyond the shallow and naive sociopolitical punk of the era. Timeless.

11. Black Sabbath: "Black Sabbath"

They say both good and bad things come in threes. This is all about three notes, which bring forth both good and bad in the mind of the listener. The triad. The ultimate, heavy, slow doom riff. I cannot count the number of times I have “written” a riff, only to realize “Damn it, I ripped off Sabbath…again.”

Bloodiest: "Pastures"

In structure and sound, Chicago post-metal septet Bloodiest is a vast and diverse experience. All members keep a busy schedule with their other projects (past and current bands include Yakuza, Atombombpocketknife, 90 Day Men, and Follows), but they also bring something quite particular to the massive sound that is Bloodiest.  Their newest album, Descent, is a barrage of grinding bass textures, heavy percussion, sonorous piano chords, and hazy yet potent vocals. It's a bleak atmosphere, but with further inspection, it also offers a deep sense of vulnerability.

Not unlike the sprawling landscapes of their favorite films and the thunderous sounds of the oft-compared Swans, these arrangements are meant to be dramatic and wide in scope. When listening to the six movements on Descent, one may be reminded of a scene in Nicolas Winding Refn’s film Valhalla Rising. These are dire, heavy orchestrations for those who expect nothing less from their music.

During this discussion, guitarist Tony Lazzara shares some of the band’s non-musical influences and what it's like to work in a larger lineup.

How would you describe the sound and direction of Bloodiest?

At the core, we are a rock band, plain and simple. We are interested in creating an environment that is dynamic and dark, but beautiful and repulsive at times.

Discuss the dynamic of writing or performing in a larger ensemble. Is this new for most of you?

A few of us have worked in larger groups, but for the most part, Bloodiest operates as a small cast and crew making a film during the writing process. For example, when you work on a collaborative project, often times everyone shares tasks. At one point, you could be the director and the next minute you could be the camera man. By this I mean we all contribute to every aspect of the writing process in some way.

The key for us is that the people in the band have diverse skill sets. Once the overall theme is established, you have to decide who will best develop the details to reinforce the concepts. One of our strengths is that we have all been close friends for many years. This allows us insight into each other's strong suits and weaknesses. The important element is getting everyone to maintain the aesthetic decided upon. If you are working on a horror film, you can't have someone writing in a slapstick comedy routine.

You cite Swans and Neurosis and musical influences.  Are there non-musical influences that shape the band's song structures and sound?

We are all big fans of Andrei Tarkovsky, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Dario Argento, to name a few. Long shots and sweeping landscapes in film are always inspiring for our musical ideas. I think that film has a way of making the viewer patient by building up small elements that lead you through the storyline. We really try to be mindful of our pacing and points of impact. The way a Dan Flavin light sculpture changes the room it's in by mostly using shadows and colored light to disorientate and lead the eye is something we try to achieve with sound.

I'm not saying that we are there yet, but it's a reference point. Creating an expansive sonic landscape is what we really want to do, and I like my landscapes to be unsettling.

What does the band prefer more, working in a studio/practice space or live?

This project is a live act, but we all have a lot of experience recording as well. As an engineer myself, being in the studio and on the stage is where I feel most comfortable. Our joke at the practice space is [that] it's not a band, it's a drinking game, which is also a good time. So they all are essential to the whole process.

What directions were not pursued with Descent that we might hear/see in the future?

For the next record, I really want to explore some more percussive instruments in the songs. Being a drummer by trade, I write my guitar lines with the drums in mind, so hopefully while we write, we can develop some more orchestrated drumming sections.

A Storm Of Light: As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade (Profound Lore, 5/17/11)

A Storm Of Light: "Destroyer"

Since its inception, Josh Graham’s A Storm Of Light has adopted a model that's based squarely on collective evolution, be it in something as complex as its musical aspirations or something as simple as its personnel. With its fourth release, As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade, the group seemingly moves a little further from its loose "project" designation yet seemingly keeps the "band" label at arm’s length.

With its sound rooted firmly in no-frills rock, Valley’s style could best be described as “talk metal” or, barring that, "verbal doom." Graham’s vocals tend to avoid conventional melody, or at least anything too advanced, instead coming off more as pitched declarations of ideology over the anvil attack of bassist Dominic Seita and newcomer drummer B.J. Graves. Though the obvious comparisons to contemporaries Neurosis or Unsane will make sense, Valley really borrows more heavily from mid-1990s hard rock — the half-spoken, hard-truth heaviness of Rollins Band, or the sludgy Sabbath nods of Soundgarden (fittingly, guitarist Kim Thayil pops in for a pair of guest spots: “Missing” and “Black Wolves”). The chugging “Collapse” evokes a less tom-reliant form of Tool, and the environmentalist-turned-existentialist "Destroyer" finally explains what a Queensrÿche / Alice in Chains / Rage Against the Machine collaboration might have sounded like.

None of this, however, should suggest that A Storm Of Light has become some kind of throwback or revivalist group; if anything, the group’s embrace of sounds past and present allows it to go a third way, at once familiar and new. The buzzsaw-jam opening “Missing” and molasses sweep of “Death’s Head” complement the near-operatic, eleven-minute, sludge-prog closer “Wasteland” in a way that shows knowledge rather than emulation, and the death march of “Silver” creates a nice sense of continuity as it resurrects the early-album doom of “Black Wolves.”

Ultimately, though Valley’s tracks hit all of the right notes, the album as a whole still maintains the workmanlike feel of A Storm Of Light’s earlier works. Few would say that’s a bad thing in and of itself, but many had hoped that Valley would be the album where the band didn’t just hit its stride but reached new heights as well.

Wino: "Release Me"

Seventeen years after his first show with Saint Vitus, singer and guitarist Scott “Wino" Weinrich stands on stage performing the songs that help launched a generational flotilla of doom. It's July 1, 2003 at the Double Door in Chicago. The crowd for the only American Saint Vitus reunion show is packed near the stage, but there's standing room at the edges.

Weinrich recalls, "It was cool but also a little bit sad. It took however many years, and we couldn't even sell out the show." Five hundred devoted friends and fans — it's a respectable but modest turnout. After decades of playing to crowds ranging from handfuls to thousands, he still can't fill a medium-size venue.

This shouldn't be a surprise; in fact, it's expected. Weinrich has always been just under the radar, a musician's musician. Over the years, he's collaborated with a gamut of rock legends, including members of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Death. His fans include Henry Rollins, who says, "Scott is one of the heaviest people known to mankind. Just listen to the music; the man matches it well."

Dave Grohl recruited him, along with other celebrated heavy-metal icons, for his Probot project, where Wino contributed vocals for "The Emerald Law" and played guitar in a live version of the band along with Grohl and Motorhead's Lemmy Kilmister. Greg Anderson, who, as a member of Sunn O))) and co-founder of Southern Lord Records, is one of the parties most responsible for the current influx of doom bands, cites Weinrich as an "immeasurable influence. The intensity and passion of his playing are unprecedented. He is not in a class of his own. He is the class and the owner."

Everyone related to heavy music has a Wino story or two, the best of which are off the record. There's a duality about the man — he's well liked, always regarded as a generous, friendly guy, but also known as a fiend, perpetually recovering from one addiction or another. He's the most famous guy in heavy metal of whom you've never heard.

As a teenager, Weinrich helped synthesize the burgeoning DC doom-metal scene of the late 1970s, playing guitar in Warhorse, the band that became The Obsessed. Neither interested in mainstream glam metal nor the counter-culture thrash movement, The Obsessed and other local groups like Pentagram purveyed a slow, bluesy take on psychedelic hard rock.

Despite scant recordings — one eight-and-a-half-minute EP and a single — the band had a tremendous influence across the music underground. Fugazi's Joe Lally briefly lived with the band and remembers, "After Wino became the singer, that's when [the] intention behind his writing became clear to me. When Wino started singing, you really felt, 'Hey, this shit is serious.'" Though his range wasn't as wide as some of his contemporaries, Weinrich was nearly unmatched in his intensity and warm soulfulness. As he honed his musicianship and songwriting skills, he also crystallized an interest in motorcycles, booze, and crack cocaine.

The next several years saw Weinrich play in a number of bands. He moved to LA in 1986 to front rising band Saint Vitus, but after three years decided that he needed to write music on guitar again. He left to reform The Obsessed with new rhythm players, including the Melvins' Dale Crover and Kyuss' Scott Reeder back in Maryland. Paradoxically, his lust for chemicals rarely affected his musical prowess. "Back in the day, people used to ask how I could play so smooth when I was that wired, but you get used to it," Weinrich says. And despite more than the occasional binge, he's kept his friends closer than most.

"Fugazi was touring Germany in the [early] '90s, and I don't remember what city we were in, but between songs I heard someone yell, 'Joe!'" Lally recalls. "It was clearly Wino. After the show, he asked us for a band photo because Hellhound was going to release the first Obsessed record from 1985, and he wanted to include photos of friends. He didn't seem to be too together at the time, and I wasn't sure I'd ever see him again. Still, he carried that photo in the pocket of his leather jacket for the rest of the Saint Vitus tour, and it got on the record sleeve. I was pretty shocked when I saw it there." After The Obsessed parted ways, the mid-'90s ushered in the era of his stoner-doom project, Spirit Caravan.

"I got kind of tired playing in bands full time. It was really starting to become unproductive. At the end of the day, I asked myself, 'Do I really want to do this full time?' I didn't."

In 2002, Weinrich joined The Hidden Hand, his most experimental endeavor to date. Like every Wino trio, this one toured relentlessly, devoted to the ideal of DIY live music. While many players burned and dropped out, Weinrich kept at it, finding fresh musical allies. "When [we were] able to tour with The Hidden Hand, it was one of the high points of playing music for me, period," reflects Mike Scheidt, YOB guitarist/vocalist. "Wino has that killer balance of great songwriting, true heaviness, and honest emotional depth borne from living a hard life and surviving long enough to tell the tale."

Over the years, Weinrich's playing evolved, assimilating more progressive, psychedelic nuances. Politics also infiltrated his lyrics, which previously tended towards philosophical and metaphysical themes. The Hidden Hand disbanded in 2007 after some nasty in-fighting on a European tour, and Weinrich attempted to take a break from music.

"I got kind of tired playing in bands full time," Weinrich admits. "It was really starting to become unproductive. At the end of the day, I asked myself, 'Do I really want to do this full time?' I didn't." These are the kind of thoughts that lead one to record a swan song, but instead, Weinrich started a new project and booked six months of gigs. Jean Paul Gester, an old friend and longtime drummer of Southern rock band Clutch, had other plans. Weinrich says, "We're good friends and had always talked about recording a record someday. Jean Paul was so enthusiastic that it was contagious. It was all the push that I needed [to continue making music]."

The other piece of the puzzle was bassist Jon Blank of DC's Rezin. "I knew that he was good, but I didn't know how good," Weinrich says. "He learned all of the songs so fast, and there was really good chemistry." Given Clutch's tireless touring schedule and Rezin's waxing profile, the real challenge was getting everyone into the jam room and studio. "There wasn't a lot of putting stuff off," Weinrich says. "We knew that we had a time frame, and we did it."

The resultant album, billed simply as Wino and titled Punctuated Equilibrium, was recorded in two sessions, half of the songs at a time. Multi-session records are usually a hodgepodge of sounds or muted by digital normalizing, but that's not the case with this record. The album sounds as if it was recorded live in a practice space. Weinrich says, "This is the best-sounding record yet."

The music is all over the place, spanning the gamut of styles that Weinrich has refined over the years, including doom, blues, hard rock, and psychedelia. Weinrich's relaxed but limber guitar playing makes it sound easy. Punctuated Equilibrium is a twisted mass of tree limbs, each song reaching in one direction only to bend in another. "I think [the album] is vaulting Scott into a new arena," says Bobby Liebling of Pentagram. "There is some incredible ear candy, and he's branching out towards much more diversified material than ever in the past…not to mention the guitar playing, [which is] murderous."

The most ethereal (read: "trippy") song on the record is "Wild Blue Yonder," a six-and-a-half-minute ride on a spaceship. "We went into the studio with just the framework and guitar melody — that's all we had," Weinrich says. The result is an acid-rock freak-out on guitar that's anchored by a relentless bass line and drum work that wrap time signatures around multiple phrases. It's seamless; you'd think these guys had been playing together for years.

Other songs on Punctuated Equilibrium bare the distinct stamp of the accompanists. "One thing about Jean Paul is that he loves crazy timing," Weinrich says."It's fun for me too, especially on songs like 'Eyes of the Flesh' and 'The Gift.'" The latter of these is a bonus track from the extra 10" record. Weinrich says, "I've only ever played it with one other drummer who understood it. Jean Paul and I hammered it out in two or three nights, and Jon learned it in one fucking night." "Eyes of the Flesh," along with other tracks like "Secret Realm Devotion" and "Gods, Frauds, Neo-Cons And Demagogues," showcases Weinrich's uncanny ability to wail out sustained notes and slow bends. Tracks such as "Silver Lining" exemplify his ability to scream melodic leads that don't soil his warm, monolithic guitar tones.

Punctuated Equilibrium is an ambitious and varied record, showcasing musicians at the top of their games, and other musicians have continued to take notice. In April of 2009, Weinrich headlined the 14^th annual Roadburn Festival in Tilberg, Netherlands with a once-again-reunited Saint Vitus.

Meanwhile, an acoustic version of his solo band played South by Southwest in the States. Last January, Weinrich announced yet another new band, Shrinebuilder, an underground-metal supergroup of sorts, featuring Scott Kelly of Neurosis, Al Cisneros of Sleep and Om, and Crover. The group will release an album in September of 2009 and is planning a brief tour. Kelly has commented in interviews that "Wino has been the keystone of this idea from its inception. It wouldn't have been worth doing, and it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been part of it. Lightning." That's to say nothing of Weinrich's rumored electronic project as well as the acoustic affair, Peckerwood. No one can accuse him of being a slouch.

When asked about the last time he had a drink, Weinrich cracks a joke: "Ten minutes ago [writer's note: it's 9 a.m.]…nah, just kidding. I gave up drinking and hard drugs a long time ago." Not that he doesn't knock back a cold one every now and then. As for the cocaine, he's remarkably candid. "It was fucking great — that's why I did it," he says. "It just becomes a lifestyle choice. You have to stay on it, tear apart your house every day, or you live a normal life. There came a point when I just had to live a normal life."

That life includes three kids — Nick (who wants a Moog keyboard), Maxwell (who wants his papa's gold chopper), and Alexandra — as well as an estranged wife, Diana. "I was a stay-at-home dad," Weinrich says. "I raised them from the cradle. Once Diana and I stopped seeing eye to eye, things changed rapidly." When he's not spending time with his kids, hunting down vintage guitar gear, or watching The History Channel, he's struggling to figure out new technology. "I traded a friend of mine for a G4 laptop. I need to figure out that phone thing to talk with the kids while I'm in Europe…Skop?"

Punctuated Equilibrium has had a positive reception with both critics and fans. "It's about timing," Weinrich asserts. "It's always been about timing, and it's never been right for me before. For some strange reason, things are coming together now." He relates his touring schedule — wall-to-wall shows with the Wino project on the road with Clutch, more Saint Vitus reunion shows, Shrinebuilder, and miscellaneous engagements through June 2009. At age 48, 30 years into his career, it's an odd time for a foray as a solo artist, but it's just what Weinrich needs.

"To be honest, this sort of gave me a shot in the arm. I felt like this record made me feel better about things; it made me want to keep playing."

Helms Alee: "New Roll"

With fresh sea legs, Seattle’s Helms Alee has not only put out a spectacular debut album, Night Terror, but also forged a sound all its own — part metal, part post-punk, part melody-driven rock, and all abandon.

“We started playing about October of 2006,” says guitarist/vocalist Ben Verellen. “We thought we’d get together and just jam around, play our thing. It quickly grew into doing a band.”

Shortly after these initial sessions, drummer Hozoji Matheson-Margullis joined up. “I was just talking to Annie — oh, Annie’s real name is Hozoji — and she said, ‘Well, I’m a drummer,’” Verellen says. “I got embarrassed because I hadn’t already asked her [to play with us]. We figured out pretty quickly that she worked well. We try not to be too calculated about anything. That might be an easier way to define something that’s a little more…something that sounds less contrived. We just stick it all together and it’s…it’s just a lot of drinking and smoking grass in the practice space.”

If that appears to be a crap-shoot of sorts, its sound is, in fact, unapologetically so. “[Bassist] Dana [James] and I laugh about it because we have no idea, but we both decided to say that it’s just a rock band,” Verellen says. “I mean, we take stuff from the heavier side, the metal, but we also have our other things going on. There is no ‘A’ part, ‘B’ part, ‘C’ part; everything is in kind of its own weird place.”
 

"There is no ‘A’ part, ‘B’ part, ‘C’ part; everything is in kind of its own weird place.”

Think of Neurosis joining up with The Breeders for a quick outing into the wilderness. If the music isn’t striking enough, the name Helms Alee is even a bit mysterious. “It’s a sailing thing,” Verellen explains. “About four years ago, one of my buddies and I bought an old, beat-up sailboat and tried to learn how to sail. We got really into the strange terminology, and that was one of the terms that you’re supposed to yell. ‘Helms alee’ means to watch out when you’re swinging the boat around, because the boom swinging overhead could knock you into the water. I thought that it was pretty neat and that it fit the band pretty well.”
 

Photo: Faith Coloccia

The band took a short West Coast tour in November of 2008 with Verellen’s old pals Minus the Bear. “[We were driving] across the state of California and ended up right in the middle of all those forest fires and lightning storms,” Verellen says of an old trip. “We were going on this mountain, and there’s fucking smoke everywhere, in our faces, and…sorry, this isn’t very interesting. I don’t do interviews. I have no quirky stories to tell."

Harvestman: "The Watcher"

When Steve Von Till joined burgeoning metal giants Neurosis in 1989, there was a distinct change in the band’s direction. Its raw hardcore from 1987 album Pain of Mind evolved into more progressive, atmospheric music over the course of The World as Law in 1990 and Souls at Zero in 1992. The maturation was purposeful but wasn’t so radical that it denoted a conscious abandonment of the band's previous work.

Twenty years later, the band is still continuing to evolve its post-hardcore sound and has influenced an entire generation of bands that worship the so-called cult of "Neur-Isis" (a tongue-in-cheek reference to both Neurosis and its latter-day kindred spirits Isis). By 1995, the band was beginning to venture farther and farther into ethereal, ambient music.

Tribes of Neurot became an alternate moniker for the band’s more experimental work, which often supplemented Neurosis titles. Even then, some musical channels remained unexplored.

In 2000, Von Till released his first album under his own name, presenting a singer/songwriter acoustic work entitled As the Crow Flies. In addition to more intimate guitar playing, his gravelly vocals took on a more weathered, reflective tone. And as his work in Neurosis, Tribes of Neurot, and as a singer/songwriter continued over the decade, he continued accumulating ideas that weren’t quite right for any of the projects.

“I had a body of work sitting around that was really concentrated on exploring the different textures and tones that an electric guitar can produce,” Von Till says. “I wanted to the use the studio as its own instrument to distill, stealing dub techniques to take what I’d tracked and morph it into something else.”
 

"I never feel that any ideas that come from my brain are that great. When I surrender to the fact that it’s larger than me — that’s when it becomes powerful."

In 2005, he released Lashing the Rye, his first record as Harvestman. It’s a strange amalgamation of sound collages, vintage psychedelia, and folk revival.

“In a way, it’s kind of my own fucked-up folk music,” says Von Till, who takes inspiration from Germanic and Celtic folklore, stemming from the modern revisiting of folk music in the 1960s and 1970s. Add to this the sonic exploration and self-reflective themes of 1970s psychedelia and 1980s electronica, and his use of “folk music” begins to hold water.

“It’s the sound of what it’s like when I visit ancient stone circles in Europe…and it’s also my love from what I see across the ocean—Hawkwind, Kraftwerk, Skullflower,” he says, noting that his music is informed by both bloodline and experience.

The communal aspect of folk music is seen in heavy psych jam “By Wind and Sun” on Harvestman’s 2009 effort In a Dark Tongue. The song is based on sessions with DJ friends in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It’s singular in that it has vocals, specifically Von Till’s repeated chant of the title.

“It sounds cheesy, but it felt like I had this druidic moment,” he explains. “I’m meditating on the themes I meditate on, and all of the sudden, that mantra just popped in there.” This spirit captures the essence of Harvestman and a more mystical sort of collaboration.

“Whether you’re in the tracking or mixing phase, you have to obey what the music demands,” he says. “If you want to surrender to the muse, the head gets in the way. I never feel that any ideas that come from my brain are that great. When I surrender to the fact that it’s larger than me — that’s when it becomes powerful.”

Solo albums are self-indulgent by design, but that indulgence offers insight into the mind of its creator. On In a Dark Tongue, Von Till ties the spirit of his own guitar warbles and tape splicing to a John Martyn cover, a hypnotic, this-is-your-brain-on-drugs collaboration with Om bassist Al Cisneros, as well as pseudo-koto sounds curated by Grails guitarist Alex Hall.

The connection is simple: these are the sounds of musical reflection upon identity, a combination of nature and nurture. And through this process, the act of yielding to the music itself becomes a journey of self-discovery.

Von Till frames it best in words that seem to channel the hunchback musician of lore: “You really discover the power of meditation and otherworldliness, surrendering yourself to some sort of different realm [and entering] trance states through music,” he says. “Harvestman is probably the purest outlet I have for that. There’s no structure, just energy.”

Intronaut: Valley of Smoke (Century Media, 10/12/10)

Intronaut: "Elegy"

Intronaut made its name in forward-thinking metal circles by understanding that pure metal moments hit harder by sandwiching them between other styles — in this case, passages that are closer to fusion or jazz. Rather than a guitar spotlight, the group reaches for a fretless bass solo; in lieu of a unison run, Intronaut deploys a spacey, percussive breakdown.

But whereas the group’s previous releases (especially Prehistoricisms in 2008) suggested a band poised squarely in art-metal territory, Valley Of Smoke shows the band moving simultaneously toward and away from modern metal. It's moving toward in its increasingly overt nods to the group’s sonic peers (Neurosis, Isis, and, at times, Pelican), but away in its refusal to ever really stick to one thing at a time, resulting in a disc that’s not easily classifiable as metal, but not easily classifiable as anything else either.

Be it the echo augmenting the clean, harmonized vocals of Dave Timnick and Sacha Dunable replacing the previous releases’ screams or the plentiful delay pushing the guitars' texture to the periphery, Intronaut employs myriad timbres on Valley of Smoke. On “Miasma,” a restless, layered opening dialogue gives way to the guttural roar of the verses. For “Sunderance,” the punctuated, staccato riffs set up the track’s crescendo chorus and wide-open, arpeggiated middle section. The mid-song leaps introduced on Prehistoricisms are flexed here in full, with Intronaut pulling off that rare feat of smoothly changing gears without having to announce it.

Buttressing space and subtlety against more conventionally abrasive riffs and double-bass drumming removes any pretense of Valley Of Smoke delivering much in the way of hooks, but this ultimately works in the album’s favor. The odd meter shifts and repeated yields to musical space make the changes in direction into quasi-hooks. Some groups use a refrain to bring listeners back to the fold; Intronaut uses a constant guessing game as its own callback. This non-linear school of songwriting isn’t for the unadventurous, but there are plenty of overlapping, Meshuggah-style grooves for listeners to latch onto.

As a result, most of the heavy lifting up to the rhythm section. Drummer Danny Walker and bassist Joe Lester’s meter changes give the disc a sneakier kind of heaviness than expected, one driven less by sound and more by feel. Consider the invasion soundscape and schizophrenic arrangements of “Below,” which sandwiches some wide-open five- and seven-time parts between vaguely Yngwie Malmsteen-esque guitar harmonies, or the group pulling out all the stops on the title track, disintegrating into a bass-and-guitar duet before picking up the pieces and reassembling them on a foundation of tribal percussion.

Intronaut's willingness to think differently gives rise to a highly unique, thoroughly compelling album. By the closing, slippery bass of “Past Tense,” Intronaut leaves its Valley Of Smoke not just in flames, but on fire.