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."

Grails: "I Led Three Lives"

Since its first full-length album in 2003 for Neurot Recordings, Grails has redefined the boundaries of the instrumental-rock record.

Much like its songs, the Portland-based quartet has built a persona around the concept of evolution, releasing album after album that bears few resemblances to its predecessors. A look at Grails’ extensive discography reveals a prismatic display of every genre that the band has contorted with its psychedelic surrealism: post-rock, minimalist kraut rock, Eastern-infused soundscapes, and metal.

Displaying a remarkable knowledge and respect for music and music history, Grails is confident in crossing through genres and sounds that would be estranged in another context. The group's songs build as swiftly as they deconstruct, always with an eclectic catalog of ideas at play.

Deep Politics, the band’s fourth release on Temporary Residence Limited, delves deeper into its countless influences and can be seen as yet another turn in the Grails music catacomb. Released three years after the heavier Doomsdayer’s Holiday, Deep Politics further nurtures Grails’ rapport with fringe culture and the occult history of library music, channeling musical modes that muddle the bizarre and accessible.

“Music history is one way we’ve learned to appreciate other human beings,” says drummer Emil Amos, who also spends time in Om and Holy Sons. “We feel this perennial camaraderie with these weird people – like David Axelrod making funk symphonies out of William Blake poetry. It’s that perversion and ruthless creative imagination that has always been a part of radical record production. We’re paying tribute to that heritage and responding to that dialectic of the century.”

“It’s a way to cast yourself in the grand scheme of things,” guitarist Alex Hall says. “If you’re walking around during the day and having trouble appreciating anyone on the sidewalk, and you put on these records and see a commonality between you and human history – there’s something positive about that. That’s something Grails is trying to shed light on. It’s taught us the value of music.”

Over the course of eight tracks and 45 minutes, Deep Politics stands as an ambitious mix of compelling melodies and lush sounds bridged by new techniques, most notably an increased utilization of a cut-and-paste production style that's commonly used by electronic and hip-hop artists.

“We’re not trying to imitate library music,” Amos says, referring to material that is written for film and media purposes and that often touches a range of emotions. “We’re just trying to break it down. It’s just a way to describe a jumping-off point.”
 

“Music history is one way we’ve learned to appreciate other human beings. We feel this perennial camaraderie with these weird people."

It’s a point that gave rise to eight songs of concentrated inventiveness, informed not only by Ennio Morricone’s prolific Italian-western film scores but the disorienting 1960s psychedelia and heavy atmospherics for which the band, whose other half is composed of William Slater and Wm. Zak Riles, is essentially known.

For Hall, the Italian-western description is just a small glimpse into the record. “To me, honestly, it sounds like a mess,” he says. “But there are usually one or two tracks that have such a strong personality that they cast an umbrella over everything else.” He recalls Burning Off Impurities, an album from 2007 that the band was afraid would be slammed for being too heavily influenced by German rock, but in the end was ultimately labeled as a desert-psych record.

“When we listen to the record, we hear a reflection of our fucked-up psychology — the processing of these toxins we were dealing with at the time,” Amos says. “We definitely don’t hear the story everyone is hearing — the story of a saloon in the desert. Anyone starting with that much of a referential understanding of what they’re trying to make is just basically writing a college thesis.”

He meditates for a second. “It can be frustrating. I think we want to force people to deal with the sound and think for themselves, but unfortunately, sometimes people end up hearing a concept they thought about before, instead of hearing the raw expression. But people can call it homosexual-cowboy trip hop and it wouldn’t matter; we’re just thankful that people are listening to us.”

Perils of an instrumental band? Yes. Though the description “cinematic” is tired and overused, especially in the post-rock game, there is a certain truth about it when talking about Deep Politics. There are grand stretches of music when listeners will almost feel obligated to fill in the anecdotes. Soft instants swell into big moments seamlessly, a tension augmented by an opposing mishmash of acoustic and electric guitar intonations, soulful piano lines, East-meets-West melodies, and lush string accompaniments from the renowned Timba Harris (Estradasphere, Secret Chiefs 3).

From the first moments of opener “Future Primitive,” one gets a sense of the band's signature demonic ambience hovering over the instruments. Suspiria-like layers of psychosis subtly crowd the musical space that is entranced by a heavy guitar riff, giving way to a pure-toned acoustic guitar that exudes the western motif. And while Harris’ presence as lone violinist is established here, so are disparate sounds; pounding drum beats meet heavy distortion and gloomy layers of background pressure.

Describing himself and Hall as the “matrix of post-rock,” Amos discloses their approach to the post-production sessions. “You’re hearing us hear our own boredom,” he says. "We want to live with the song’s creative process as long as possible, and that’s why our songs have so many weird layers. We want to hear something new happen, and we’ve learned to use the computer to excite our own ears.”

“Being an instrumental band, we’re very self-conscious about the danger of our music being boring,” Hall says. “It forces us to pack in the atmosphere and ambience. Though all the chill moments are deliberately there to cure our boredom, they still have to be engaging. We’re not a drone band that feels content with putting out 45 minutes of two notes.”

Grails’ strictly instrumental music gives instant payoffs all over the record. “All The Colors of the Dark” takes its overarching melody from Bruno Nicolai’s work in Sergio Martino’s 1972 giallo film of the same name, though it transforms it into a completely different being. The song’s brooding bit, dominated by a lone piano, traverses into a symphonic guitar assault, all the while keeping the same mood and composure.

Harris' strings lift the whole affair into a standout track that takes on a classical guise. A perfect match in music sensibilities, what begins as a somber piano ballad turns into an endearing string symphony over a hard drum beat. It all begins to amplify a protagonist’s existential crisis in a film plot that ultimately is imaginary. “If you’re trying to create a Hitchcock movie, you have to evoke Bernard Herrmann,” Amos says. “And we were lucky enough to be put in touch with Timba by Randall Dunn.”

Harris, who can also be heard on the grand anti-finale of “Deep Snow,” has a way of creating depth and drama. “He has a lot of interesting ways to evoke full-out symphonies,” Hall says. "He came in at the right time, when we were making something grand and melancholy.”

The band more quietly experiments with the world of samples, employing the aforementioned cut-and-paste approach so cunningly at times that it’s impossible to tell where one source ends and another begins. This technique is readily apparent on “Corridors of Power,” an experimental track that sounds as if “Madlib contributed a song to Deep Politics,” Amos says. “We were trying to reduce our spectrum to drum machine and turntables. It was a way to come from a completely different angle but reach the same mood.”

“Almost Grew My Hair” provides a stark contrast as a powerhouse that begins the record’s grand descent, with three of the last songs averaging eight minutes each. Dense in range and reach, instruments begin to jumble, progressing through movement after movement with little respite. One moment of clarity leads to aggression in the next, heavy bass riffs draw back and forth, and focused guitar melodies spontaneously turn into nightmarish screeches.

“One of our favorite things about people like Morricone,” Amos says, “is that for the first time in the century, a respected master of musicology could employ instruments into his music just to evoke, for example, a schizophrenic killer who talks in a Donald Duck voice. What kind of music comes on the screen when he appears?”

Examining Morricone's creative freedom ultimately sheds light on Grails’ music philosophy. Hall looks to the session players who actually played the music for inspiration. “You have these forms of music that were totally boxed in and completely framed with a context," he says, "where most of the time you had these guys in the studio who just wanted to express themselves.”

Amos agrees, saying, “[These composers' and musicians'] message to us is that there are literally no rules. When you seize that concept — that’s the most powerful moment you have. Most people are using music as though it’s a simple video game; they’re trying to reach an easy objective. But when you hear those masters, you perceive a higher level of freedom. Listening to those composers, you can see where we’re trying to get back to — how they seized those frontiers.”

Grails’ grand narrative, after all, is searching out those new musical frontiers. Deep Politics, yet another compelling synthesis of music past and present, continues the long-running investigation into the unknown.

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.”

Currently residing in Portland, Oregon, Winter works as a graphic designer — a medium in which he is primarily self-taught — creating product packaging, logos, and various designs for Internet and print publications. His eccentric visual taste and musical passion are visible through his highly detailed band posters, albums, and T-shirt designs.
 

Lloyd Eugene Winter: Silver Apples poster

Like many contemporary artists, Winter utilizes both analog and digital tools. He often finds himself in endless cycles of “sketch, erase, sketch, erase” until he is able to visualize and create what he deems a decent illustration. Though he regularly uses software such as Photoshop, Winter favors the tactility of analog and handmade work.

As for inspiration, Winter notes his rock-art contemporaries Seripop and David V. D’Andrea. Winter is also on an endless search for hands-on resources from which he will derive an initial sketch or concept. “I love the library; I always feel like a trip to the library usually yields interesting and unique image finds," he says. "I’m always on the lookout when I head to vintage and thrift shops for interesting books and magazines.”
 

Lloyd Eugene Winter: Tender Loving Empire hoodie

Winter’s poster illustrations are imaginative, detailed creations of lush landscapes and ethereal animals. Through the use of tantalizing linearity, Winter creates psychedelic swirls of movement, which provide each piece with a sense of alertness and motion.

“It seems like the bands I work with usually want an element of psychedelia in the artwork, regardless of how psychedelic their band sounds,” Winter jokes. As an artist, however, Winter is careful not to go overboard with such requests; his posters generally remain timid while flirting with lively colors and interwoven textual elements. In fact, Winter hopes to incorporate typography more heavily into his future work; he’s particularly interested in expanding his knowledge of printmaking to include the technique of letterpress printing.

Recently, Winter has created rock posters for such bands as KTL, Om, Horse Feathers, and Silver Apples, as well as album art for Darkest Hour and Finn Riggins.  He also designs band merch for many of his clients, and within all of his pieces, he strives to create a “meaningful and impactful visual experience.” He enjoys working in the vein of rock art due to the equal parts freedom and respect that he receives from musicians – whom he notes are often his close friends or acquaintances.

Winter also emphasizes that he enjoys working with the same bands over long periods of time. He is thereby able to expand upon his initial or instinctive ideas, and develop these designs into a coherent series or theme. Through this process, Winter can see his work, as well as the band’s, grow both visually and conceptually.
 

Lloyd Eugene Winter: Horse Feathers poster

Winter describes album artwork as a slightly more sophisticated process than the “fast, furious” momentum that goes into creating gig posters. He states, “Album art takes a bit more time and thought to plan, conceptualize, discuss, and produce…and honestly, it is a little more challenging and exciting.” However, Winter has no intention of ditching his poster-making career any time soon. He appreciates the ephemeral nature of posters, the enjoyment that he derives from the process of creation, and the enthusiasm that he receives from both musicians and fans.

Since the early 1990s,  D’Andrea has gradually become a staple in the West Coast music scene. Growing up, D’Andrea produced zines and fliers – generally in the DIY fashion of Xeroxing – for a variety of underground bands in the Oakland, California area. By the mid-'90s, the artist's work began to receive well-deserved attention: D’Andrea soon had a commission for an album cover.

David V. D'Andrea: Swans poster

These days, D’Andrea appreciates music from the 1960-'70s progressive-rock era, as well as current psych and “heavy” music – which is where his vivid illustrations are utilized most often. However, D’Andrea is adamant about mentioning his opposition towards genre and music classification in general.

“I simply try to align myself with bands and artists who aren’t stuck in a genre – either physically or mentally," he says. "Over the past few years, I’ve been extremely fortunate in this respect.” D’Andrea has recently produced commissioned work for artists as varied as Queens of the Stone Age, Mogwai, Swans, and OM, and even a poster for director Lars Von Trier’s genre-defining film Antichrist. Additionally, he has designed album artwork for Ulver, Witchcraft, and Wino, among others.

D’Andrea’s poster and album art are successful examples of the artist’s punctuated and mature style. The pieces – in terms of both layout and content – firmly hold their ground. His artwork is dark yet organic, heavy yet fantastic. His images weave together rich hues, dark tones, and exceptionally complex textures and details.

David V. D'Andrea: Antichrist poster

Moreover, the artwork is full of gothic undertones and surreal surroundings that create an ethereal quality within the imagery. The viewer is placed in a luscious, fantastical world – one that is endlessly dark and delicate. D’Andrea creates eerie scenes filled with stoic human figures, disillusioned faces, nature, and death. Depictions of trees, blossoming flowers, and tombstones are omnipresent, as are D’Andrea’s unusual textures – often reminiscent of reptile scales and bird feathers.

In the past, D’Andrea has worked closely with friend and artist Matt Parrillo, who founded the independent record label Life is Abuse and the printmaking studio Monolith Press – two projects with which D’Andrea was frequently involved. Although he recently relocated to Portland, Oregon, D’Andrea continues to produce work for both the Portland and Bay areas. His current endeavors include commissions for Godspeed You! Black Emperor, OM, and Agalloch, a collection of posters for the Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Holland during April of 2011, and artwork for an upcoming gallery opening December 2 in San Francisco.

David D'Andrea: Mono poster

In the midst of all his projects, D’Andrea also hopes to find time to experiment with various printmaking techniques, beyond the screen-printing with which he is most familiar. For the indefinite future, however, D’Andrea’s schedule is crazy with assorted deadlines – but he’s not complaining.

“I truly believe in the notion that ‘anything goes’ in illustration," he says. "I want to look back on my body of work as something that has evolved and changed through time. This means that I need to remain open to borrowed images, found scraps, photography – absolutely anything and everything.”

Cisneros has been a prominent figure in underground metal for years, but his gentle, unassuming demeanor is a far cry from what many would expect from a musician associated with what is typified as an aggressive, macho genre.

Om, the intense, hypnotic bass-and-drum duo that he founded with drummer Chris Haikus in 2003, has been reinventing the way that many people perceive heavy music. Its songs are cerebral but accessible, spiritual but unreligious. Om’s music could be used to excite the apathetic as much as it could serve as a meditative soundtrack for the hyperactive.

In a live setting, Om takes on another dimension. The walls rattle under the colossal vibrations from Cisneros’ bass cabinets, fuelled by his carefully selected custom amps; the huge, warm sounds that come out of them seem to enter the body, resulting in a feel that is like being caught in the eye of a storm.

“I feel really safe sometimes, if that’s the right word, when the speakers [fuzz out] like that,” Cisneros says. “Descriptions [of music] can be stereotypes. It’s very peaceful.”

When Haikus amicably left the band in the spring of 2008, Cisneros sought out Grails drummer and Holy Sons mastermind Emil Amos to take his place. Things have been good ever since, as the title of Om’s fourth studio album and first featuring Amos on drums, God is Good (Drag City), suggests.

“It’s just true,” Cisneros says of the title, which, true to form, decontextualizes religious iconography from its traditional meanings. “We’re in the journey right now, and we wanted to sing about it. It’s the word symbol we came up with. You can’t explain it. The more you try with words, the more you try to explain what it means.” As each word passes, Cisneros sounds vaguely frustrated at trying to communicate such esoteric thoughts out loud. “You can feel it,” he continues. “Everyone can feel it.”

Amos is more direct about the title. “It makes me think of a really hellish LSD trip,” he says, “where at the end of the whole thing, you meet this sobbing resolution that things actually are okay—the fact that you know, in some Jungian sense or in a Carl Sagan book, [that] the creation of this universe came from the first moment of good winning over evil.”

Cisneros began exploring the depths of heavy metal as a teenager in the late ’80s, when he and Haikus formed punk/metal hybrid Asbestosdeath. The band added second guitarist Matt Pike (now guitarist/frontman of High on Fire) and by the early 1990s morphed into Sleep—a riff-brandishing psychedelic power trio, a band that owed more to the bluesy grooves of Black Sabbath and Pentagram yet whose sound was filtered through a set of musicians that had also been exposed to Bay Area hardcore and thrash.

“We all dropped out of high school—I think every one of us,” Cisneros recalls. “We were all having hard times, and we were friends through music.” For the young friends, music became more than just a hobby. “[It was] our lifeline,” he corrects. “I wouldn’t have made it through those times without it.”

Sleep grew a following, and with the release of its second album, Sleep’s Holy Mountain, many believed that it had the potential to cross into the mainstream. The band signed with London Records to release its third album, tentatively titled Dopesmoker, a single, hour-long epic song that had taken the band years to perfect.

The label, rather than appreciating what it had, saw it as “noncommercial” and toyed with remixing it and dividing the song into pieces. The band was horrified and eventually broke up under the strain, but the album later surfaced as the segmented Jerusalem on Rise Above Records, and eventually, an unabridged version of Dopesmoker was released on Tee Pee.

Sleep left a legacy not only because of its primal, heavy sounds that have influenced others, but also because of its unwavering commitment to its vision of its art, no matter what the stakes.

In the aftermath of Sleep, Cisneros stopped playing music for seven years. “I just took the time to go back to school—and live, really,” he says. “I didn’t want people to tell me that I had to do Sleep. I wanted to know what I wanted and what was right to me.

"I used that time to find it and to cultivate it. In finding that, the songs that I had already been hearing were able to be treated with the respect that they deserved, and I was able to document the ones that really stuck with me. It was time to play; I needed to heal, though, first. When Sleep had broken up, I felt like I had died. It meant so much to me. It meant my entire life. When it went the way it did…I never knew that there would be a return to playing.”

As the songs began to accumulate, Cisneros called Haikus, and the two teamed up as Om. “From that point forward, we were going to do it,” he says. “It was like being able to live over again with a different appreciation, being able to be connected.” Beginning with 2005 experimental album Variations on a Theme through the awe-inspiring Pilgrimage (Southern Lord) in 2007, Om impressed listeners with the intense yet organic feel of its music.

It bucked convention with minimal, droning sounds that were punctuated by Cisneros’ staccato, mantra-like vocals in pieces that could last upwards of twenty minutes. “It is all about the feel and the duration of the art, how it needs to be, and the distance it needs to be,” Cisneros says. “I’d be fighting myself thinking about wanting to write a song a certain length.”

That same intuition on which Cisneros relies for writing music came into play when he asked Amos to join his band. The two had recently met when Om and Grails played a short string of shows together, but otherwise they were virtual strangers.

“We knew only enough about each other that we knew that we got along,” Amos says. “We knew that we both worshipped [prolific jazz and fusion drummer] Billy Cobham, Pink Floyd, and dub. We had some heated late-night discussions [about music], and that was about it.”

Amos, as one might imagine, was caught off guard. “I didn’t know what to say,” he recalls. “My life was in disarray at the time.”

A grueling schedule of music and production projects had left him burned out and reevaluating his way of life. “I became a machine,” he says. “I gave myself to music completely for the first time. I’d avoided it my whole life; I never wanted to make it a job.” To cap it off, “I had gotten out of an eight-year relationship, and the girl left the country on the day that Al called me. My life completely changed in one category, and literally a couple of hours later he called me. My head turned from one reality to another reality.”

With that, Amos joined, and Cisneros’ instinct proved to be dead on. In preparation for a European tour, Cisneros flew from his California home to Portland, where he and Amos spent two days practicing before recording their first piece of music together, the Gebel Barkel 7” (Sub Pop), which cemented a new era for the band. “It’s pretty unreal for a band to assume that they could form like that,” Amos says, “and record their debut two days later and expect that it will be fine. And we did that.”

With the addition of Amos, Om has not done away with its signature style, but both fans and critics have recognized a distinct freshness to the duo’s performance (illustrated on Live Conference, a live rendition of Conference of the Birds [Important Records, 2009]), a reflection of the energy that transpires between the two musicians.

Amos, who cut his teeth on hardcore growing up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina before branching into more worldly styles, describes the lineup (“crudely,” he admits) as “a hardcore kid and a metal kid coming together,” noting that their musical partnership has opened the gates for what has become a unique friendship. “We’ve needed each other on a level that we couldn’t have seen,” he says. “There are an odd number of coincidences of how we think. We just flow so well; the whole thing has this serendipitous, odd synchronicity to it. The way we came together just worked.”

The two share a similar aesthetic that goes beyond the actual craft of making music. “I look at music as a very serious form of spiritual discipline,” Amos says. “It’s the same thing for Al. The artistic template is the way to pursue your own sanity. … It’s not like a job, but it is a format in which to live. It’s a spiritual work. Work is sort of all we have as humans. We apply ourselves for life as making music, and that keeps us happy. Without that, we would be lethargic and confused. It’s a form of finding yourself and a strata of values within the world.”

“The music happens because it has to, and that’s essential,” Cisneros says. “It can’t be forced at all, or it’s not worth participating in. I’ve seen people sit at a guitar for ten hours, and it’s like, ‘Dude, water’s not going to come out of your rock.’ I don’t even understand it—does that person have to play? If they’re going through all of that, what’s the whole idea?”

Continuing, he muses, “Songwriting seems to be more of a job as an editor rather than a writer. It’s more a process of negotiation and building and learning what not to do. When you have a part that seems right in your heart, you ask yourself, ‘How do I stay there? How do I not go away from that?’”

With Amos, Cisneros stays right in the thick of it. He describes their creative output as a flood, with parts of God is Good coming so suddenly that “We’d record it on our cell phones just so we could have it documented.”

The album, recorded with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio studios in Chicago, showcases Om’s penchant for creating music that is as genuinely emotive as it is heavy, best illustrated on opening number “Thebes,” which begins serenely, building into a rollicking thunder before coming down again.

And though the core of the duo remains the focal point, subsequent tracks weave in other sounds and moods, such as the rhythmic handclaps leading the way on “Cremation Ghat Pt. 1.” (it’s actually danceable) and the help of friends such as flutist Lorraine Rath and Lichens / 90 Day Men member Rob Lowe on tamboura at key points throughout the album. “It’ll always be the bass and drum, but we’ve been using different instruments to lead the songs,” Amos says. “It’s important for the trajectory of where the records are going to find new ways to say things. Live, we haven’t worked [it] out…the band will always be the two guys.”

Designed by Grails’ Alex Hall, the album’s cover art depicts a gold-leaf halo-adorned angel against a stark black backdrop, echoing the softer but nearly identical imagery of Pilgrimage. And like the art, God is Good represents another step in the journey for Om—a heightened sense of focus and wellbeing that doesn’t lose sight of the original goal.

Likewise, this newfound positive energy has given way to a tidal wave of new music that extends outside of the band as well. In January 2009, Cisneros joined Scott “Wino” Weinrich, Neurosis’ Scott Kelley, and Melvins’ Dale Crover in a “masters of underground rock” super-group, Shrinebuilder, whose upcoming self-titled album has been touted as one of the most anticipated heavy albums of the year.

In May, he joined former Sleep bandmates at All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival in the UK for a highly anticipated reunion that marked the first time the legendary trio had performed together since it disbanded more than a decade ago. Amos has been busy as well; among other projects, he has edited and produced Grails’ Acid Rain DVD (Temporary Residence), released Holy Sons’ sixth full-length, Drifters Sympathy (Important), and begun work on yet another Grails album.

This multitude of other projects has served to heighten the duo’s enthusiasm for Om. “One of the things that we’ve been able to do is to start using more areas of the canvas,” Cisneros says, hinting that the best is yet to come. “It has deepened what preexisted, and it has opened what was once contained. It has let in light and energy, and I am totally, totally thankful. The rate that Emil and I work…there is a lot there. We’re so excited with the outcome [of the new albums], but it’s really just beginning.”

Quoting another prominent figure in the genre, Amos concludes, “Dylan Carlson from Earth said it well: ‘I don’t want to make more noise. The world is noisy enough.’ Al and I are trying to create a cohesive sum of what we’ve learned, rather than just noise pollution.”

ALARM leaves no genre unloved in our round-up of 50 albums that didn't receive enough attention in 2009.

Omar Rodriguez Lopez: Old Money (Stones Throw, 1/27/09)

Omar Rodriguez Lopez: "Family War Funding"

The first of many releases in 2009 from prolific guitarist/composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. Accessible and centered on rock, sounding spacey, funky, progressive, psychedelic, a little jazzy, and a little Latin.

Kevin Hufnagel: Songs for the Disappeared (self-released, 2/3/09)

Kevin Hufnagel: "Tres"

Musical themes come and go, covering swaths of Spanish and Gypsy guitar before reverting back to haunting rock melodies, on this solo acoustic album from highly technical Dysrhythmia guitarist Kevin Hufnagel.

P.O.S: Never Better (Rhymesayers, 2/3/09)

P.O.S.: "Drumroll"

Likely the year's best hip-hop album, Never Better draws on Stefon Alexander’s background in punk and rock music (he plays most of the live instrumentation on the record), making this is an album that categorically defines the indie in indie rap.

Zu: Carboniferous (Ipecac, 2/17/09)

Zu: "Ostia"

Sludgy alt-metal with complex repeated rhythms and free-jazz freakouts. Features Mike Patton on two killer tracks.

The Andreas Kapsalis & Goran Ivanovic Guitar Duo: s/t (2/24/09)

The Andreas Kapsalis & Goran Ivanovic Guitar Duo: "Shadow Thief"

A Balkan-influenced classical guitarist joins an ethically inspired finger-tapping guitarist for a disc of skill and beauty.

16: Bridges to Burn (Relapse, 2/24/09)

16: "Throw in the Towel"

Dubbed the "Unsane of the West Coast" by ALARM's Jamie Ludwig, 16 issued another hard-hitting riff fest in 2009 with Bridges to Burn, the band's best album to date.

Umlaut: s/t (3/10/09)

Umlaut: "Kitty Puppy"

Mr. Bungle's Bär McKinnon, multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire, issued one hell of an album for this new project — one that filters meticulous melodies and asinine vocals through the lens of a whacked-out lounge group.

Jono El Grande: Neo Dada (Rune Grammofon, 3/16/09)

Jono El Grande: "Oslo Coty Suite"

Fanciful music that's different around every turn. Art rock that weaves through theatrical, progressive, classical, and absurdist styles with influences from Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, King Crimson and Igor Stravinsky.

Kylesa: Static Tensions (Prosthetic, 3/17/09)

Kylesa: "Scapegoat"

Down-tuned dirge metal that rumbles with crust punk, sludge, metal, hardcore, and psychedelia, often laced with atmospheric samples. To date, Static Tensions is Kylesa's most powerful album.

(MF) Doom: Born Like This (Lex, 3/23/09)

Doom: "Cellz"

Dropping his “MF” prefix, the incomparable rapper and Marvel-inspired supervillain delivered another nearly impenetrable wall of rhymes and flow, dizzying listeners with his ever-shifting, slowly delivered lyrics.

Converge: Axe to Fall (Epitaph)

After nearly 20 years together, unconventional Boston hardcore quartet Converge adds to its eminent catalog with an album that will be one of the best heavy discs of the year.

Immediately, Axe to Fall delivers a heaping dose of full-throttle thrash metal, accelerating through push beats, high-string pull-offs, and double-bass blasts to establish a new tone for the band. "Reap What You Sow" continues the assault with palm-muted speed riffs and squealing solos that wouldn't sound out of place in Metallica's early catalog.

Guitarist/producer Kurt Ballou is at his absolute peak, creating the aforementioned mania and utilizing his usual armaments of dirge riffs, down-tuned chugging, and morose melodies. Additionally, the group's stream of one-off guest musicians continues to widen, this time sweeping guitarist Steve Von Till (Neurosis), vocalist Mookie Singerman (Genghis Tron), and three-quarters of Cave In (guitarists Stephen Brodsky and Adam McGrath and drummer JR Conners) into compelling cameos.

Ultimately, Axe to Fall makes its case to be Converge's best album. But whether or not you agree, it's another reflection of Converge at the top of its game, crushing listeners will full-bodied hardcore that isn't afraid to bust out an acoustic guitar, piano, and glockenspiel for a track.

Russian Circles: Geneva (Suicide Squeeze)

Striking a balance between the relentless riffage of Enter (Flameshovel, 2006) and the melodious restraint of Station (Suicide Squeeze, 2008), Geneva showcases a maturity of instrumental rock trio Russian Circles through complete creations — songs that equally call upon sheer beauty, ascending tension, and caustic force.

It’s not as voracious as the band’s debut, but Geneva retains a dynamic vibe through rhythmic heaviness, much of which comes via new bassist Brian Cook. A current member of These Arms are Snakes, Cook makes his “debut” on Geneva, making his presence immediately felt with a worming bass groove on album opener “Fathom.”

Cook is but one key addition to the band’s repertoire; adjunct instruments, generally stringed, augment and guide much the album’s material.

These chordophones accentuate three of the album’s first four tracks, and they lead the first five minutes of “Philos,” a 10-minute epic that closes Geneva in ruminative fashion. Just prior, distant horns utter a wordless lamentation on the album’s penultimate track, “When the Mountain Comes to Muhammad.”

In retrospect, Geneva should mark the pivot point for the band's career — a moment that marks both the band’s musical maturity and its arrival as a major player in independent rock.

Shrinebuilder: s/t (Neurot)

Consisting of guitarist Scott Kelly (Neurosis), guitarist Scott “Wino” Weinrich (Saint Vitus), bassist Al Cisneros (Om), and drummer Dale Crover (Melvins), this highly anticipated project is a four-piece heavy-psych super group that holds long-lasting intentions.

As one might imagine based on the members’ current and former bands, Shrinebuilder is based on brief, cyclical riffs that are topped with swirling effects. These give way to fuller, meditative breakdowns, which frequently revert back to mid-tempo stoner-metal wizardry.

Each member contributes vocals, which range from semi-spoken to distant, harmonic, and gruff. These different vocal styles help to individualize each track, which might otherwise run together via similarities in style and duration.

“Pyramid of the Moon” combines hymnal harmonies, high-pitched guitar synchronizations, über-echoed vocals, and a warbling synth sound into a dreamy blend. We could proclaim it to be the best selection of this five-tune full-length, but the album’s final track, “Science of Anger,” only comes with the full retail version of the album – available today.

Honorable mentions:

The Black Heart Procession: Six (Temporary Residence)
Fuck Buttons: Tarot Sport (ATP)
OOIOO: Armonico Hewa (Thrill Jockey)
Sufjan Stevens: The BQE (Asthmatic Kitty)
Themselves: CrownsDown (Anticon)

Om: God is Good (Drag City)

Following the amicable departure of drummer Chris Haikus in early 2008, hypnotic bass-and-drums duo Om found a chiefly suitable replacement: Emil Amos, a key component of visceral, worldly, genre-defying quartet Grails.

Amos joins bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros, a long-heralded piece of stoner-doom band Sleep who has used Om to channel discarnate vibes.  The result is a further worldly bent, with the help of friends such as flutist Lorraine Rath and Lichens / 90 Day Men member Rob Lowe on tamboura.

Recorded with Steve Albini at Chicago's Electrical Audio, God is Good showcases Om’s penchant for creating music that is as genuinely emotive as it is heavy, best illustrated on opening number “Thebes,” which begins serenely, building into a rollicking thunder before coming down again.  And like the art, God is Good represents another step in the journey for Om — a heightened sense of focus and wellbeing.

Om: "Cremation Ghat II"
Om: \"Cremation Ghat II\"

Ben Perowsky: Moodswing Orchestra, Vol. 2 (El Destructo)

For this second installment of down-tempo jams and improvisations, drummer/producer/composer Ben Perowsky joins forces again with turntablist / electronic performer Markus Miller and keyboardist Glenn Patscha, who all began the Moodswing Orchestra in a live improv setting in 2002.

Gathering a cast of all-star guests for this installment, Perowsky instructs his musical brethren away from the jazz idiom — in his words, "less Herbie, more Eno."  The result is an eclectic disc full of elastic grooves, sultry and low-key vocals, and atmospheric improvisation.  Smooth bass sounds meld with computerized tones, flute, oboe, theramin, saxophone, and the trio's regular armaments to create a seductive sonic alloy.

Big-name collaborators Bebel Gilberto, Jennifer Charles (Elysian Fields), Steven Bernstein (Sex Mob), and Miho Hatori (Cibo Matto) join lesser-known but equally vital guests in the form of Pamelia Kurstin, Marcus Rojas, Joan Wasser (Joan as Policewoman), Doug Wieselman, and others.  For soothing jams with striking originality and exceptional musicianship, pick this up.

Ahleuchatistas: Of The Body Prone (Tzadik)

With its proper Tzadik debut, Ahleuchatistas issues one of its most well-rounded albums, mixing improvisational and math-rock madness with refined (though still measurably impenetrable) rhythms.  There's a greater emphasis on melodies and repeated patterns this time around, and new drummer Ryan Oslance proves capable of appropriate accompaniment.

Tzadik, which last year re-released the band's 2004 album (The Same and the Other), should be a suitable home for Ahleuchatistas, which appeals to fans of math rock, prog rock, and experimental rock and even draws in some jazz heads.

Jason Adasiewicz’s Rolldown: Varmint (Cuneiform)

Vibraphone virtuoso Jason Adasiewicz has some of the most dexterous chops in Chicago's thriving jazz scene, capable of creating motion blur for concertgoers.  But Adasiewicz also slows it down, and his effort as a bandleader, Rolldown, combines the two worlds in a deft interplay between composition and improvisation.

For this sophomore effort, Rolldown treats listeners to more of its wandering, melodic passages, rife with cool ambience, fiery solos, sharp snare accents, and clicking chemistry.  Cornetist Josh Berman, alto saxophonist and clarinetist Aram Shelton, bassist Jason Roebke, and drummer Frank Rosaly round out the expert quintet.

Jason Adasiewicz's Rolldown: "Hide"
Jason Adasiewicz\'s Rolldown: \"Hide\"

Busdriver will release a new album, Jhelli Beam, via Anti- on June 9, dropping his tireless flow over a disc full of classical, jazz, Bollywood, and prog-rock samples.

Norwegian prog/jazz/metal group Shining currently has a chopped-up preview of its forthcoming album, slated for release on Rune Grammofon on October 12, posted on its MySpace page.

In an interview with BBC, Warp Records founder Steve Beckett says that a new Aphex Twin album definitely is on the way, possibly sometime this year.  The last Aphex Twin studio album, Drukqs, was released in 2001.

Stoner/doom duo Om has signed to Drag City, which will release its new, currently untitled album on September 8.  The album is being recorded by Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio studio.

Melodic metal instrumentalists Russian Circles will debut new material during a two-week US tour in late April, after which they will return to the studio to record a follow-up to 2008 album Station, due in October or November on Suicide Squeeze.

Converge has posted a brief preview video of a song from its upcoming album, out later this year on Epitaph/Deathwish.

Both this weekend and next weekend, guitarist/vocalist Nils Frykdahl of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum will provide musical accompaniment for Twobird, a performance-art piece in Berkely by Michael McCamish.

Tonight is the first UK performance by The Fear, a new project from Leo and Milo Smee, the founders of funk/prog/metal collective Chrome Hoof.  The duo performs with drums, bass, synths, and samples.