The Lovely Eggs make a decision, Spacetrucker king you, Desert Storm go black and more in today’s Roundup. For some reason, there’s a lot of loud stuff — if this keeps up, I’ll have to start a Metal Monday edition.
1 | The Lovely Eggs | This Decision
THE PRESS RELEASE: “For the last two years, The Lovely Eggs have watched England and the rest of the world slowly crumble. Their new album I am Moron, due out April 3, contains their observations and relentless analysis of a modern culture that has brought humanity to its knees. On the album’s lead single This Decision, the Eggs launched an outright attack on greed and mindless consumerism and presented a fierce defense of the no-frills lifestyle they have chosen to pursue. This Decision goes further than capturing the zeitgeist of Brexit Britain. It’s about choice — and the lack of it — in society. This decision is all mine. Or is it?”
2 | Spacetrucker | King Cheeto
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Saint Louis stoner rockers Spacetrucker share the fun-laden, satiric video for their King Cheeto track off the Turned to Stone Chapter 1: Enter Galactic Wasteland split EP with Mr. Bison. The special video is satirically written from the perspective of a certain polarizing political figure. Spacetrucker have a tasty treat in store for you with this one, both musically and visually! Are you ready to meet King Cheeto?”
3 | Desert Storm | Black Bile
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Oxford’s cornerstone sludge metal unit Desert Storm return with a bang this spring with their fifth full-length Omens, due out May 1, preceded by their spine-chilling new video for Black Bile. “Lyrically, Black Bile is based around the idea of the black plague. In the video the plague doctor is also represented as a grim reaper or Freddy Krueger-type menace haunting the sick in their dreams. Musically the song is one of the heaviest, yet most progressive songs we have written.” says the band. The video was directed by Josh Horwood.”
4 | Twitch Of The Death Nerve | Apotropaic Scarification
THE PRESS RELEASE: “In 2014 Twitch Of The Death Nerve unleashed the barrage of their debut album A New Code Of Morality onto an unsuspecting and wholly unprepared world. However, despite the shock and awe engendered by that release, it was merely the calm before the storm. With the dawning of a new decade the UK’s most extreme musical export are back, with an explosive new album, a tornado of unfettered rage and hatred. The extreme violence of A Resting Place For The Wrathful is a product of our ever deteriorating society. Twitch Of The Death Nerve have sucked up all the frustration and disgust that we wade through every day and expelled it in one devastating, primal scream. This is the ultimate act of musical catharsis. It lets you taste the darkness, it takes you within a hair’s breadth of opening fire and emptying a magazine into the crowds of mindless meat that surround you and suffocate you with their idiocy and emptiness. The riffs dart across the frantic drums in a twisted, uncontrollable frenzy while the guttural vocals send their hatred vibrating through your entrails. There is no safe space, no solid ground in which to anchor yourself, the only option is to surrender to the insanity.”
5 | Nite | The Way
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Nite — with current and former members of Satan’s Wrath, Dawnbringer, High Spirits, and more — falls in March with the release of the band’s debut album, Darkness Silence Mirror Flame. This week they’ve unveiled the album’s cover art, track listing, and more, and an official video for the album’s The Way. Nite was formed in 2018 by Van Labrakis, Scott Hoffman, Bryan Coons, and Pat Crawford. Delivering traditional heavy metal with blackened vocals, heavily influenced by the NWOBHM and the heavy metal titans of the 1980s, Nite brings us back to the golden age of heavy metal. On their debut album, Darkness Silence Mirror Flame, Nite deploys eight searing songs. Razor sharp guitars, blazing leads, earth shattering bass, and punishing drums set the stage for the filthy, vile, and despicable vocals to unfold stories of horror, darkness, and despair.”
6 | Rustin Man | Jackie’s Room
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Rustin Man a.k.a Paul Webb (of Talk Talk) will release a new album, Clockdust – his second in two years – on March 20th. The first song to be shared from the new record is Jackie’s Room, with a video directed by Edwin Burdis. Having waited 17 years for Drift Code, some may be surprised at Clockdust’s swift arrival, but the album’s roots can be found in the same extended sessions. “Early on I realized I had two albums worth of material,” Webb explains. “The first tunes I wrote were electric guitar based, with long arrangements that built up in layers to something sonically quite dense. These became the bulk of Drift Code. As a reaction, I wrote a batch of songs that were tighter in their structure but had more feeling of space. These make up the bulk of Clockdust.” Lead single Jackie’s Room is about a dysfunctional yet romantic relationship in which the protagonist believes “as long as she’s desired, she’ll never grow old” and the resulting track sways with the grace of its aging seductress. “I think of the album as containing stories from people who’ve reached their present situation through many years of experiences.”
7 | The Happy Sun | On A Rail
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Gerhard did it again, unpacked his camera, filmed and edited. DIY is the key – as with most within the The Happy Sun-world. On A Rail is another song from the self-titled debut and shows its quiet side, reminiscent here and there strongly of the melodic West-Coast sound of the late 1960s and early 1970s — with a psychedelic touch.”
8 | Black Belt Eagle Scout | I Said I Wouldn’t Write This Song
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Black Belt Eagle Scout — moniker of Portland-based multi-instrumentalist Katherine Paul — releases a video for I Said I Wouldn’t Write This Song, off last year’s At the Party With My Brown Friends. As described by Paul, the song “is about an initial thought that you don’t think will come to fruition, but for whatever circumstances, does. It’s about that kind of craving emotion within oneself that just turns up and has to come out of you no matter what.” Its animated video was edited and directed by Chantal Jung (Inujuk Nunatsiavutimi), and is meant to raise awareness of the Alaskan coastline and its deep connection with Indigenous people and animals. “The video features Northern imagery that shows aspects of Inuit life, including cloudberry picking, animal relatives and Arctic landscapes,” describes Jung. “People often forget that our livelihoods are extremely connected to the environment, including the animals and plants that live among us. This video is meant to bring awareness of the land, the animals and the people who protect the land.”
9 | Solothus | The Watcher
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Realm Of Ash And Blood, the third album from Finland’s Solothus, drops a dripping broadsword of Cimmerian carnage and staggering death-soaked doom delirium on the scorched landscape from which only mounds of skull dust and obsidian shards shall remain. Solothus’ oppressively heavy mid-paced slaughter maintains a sense of unstoppable momentum even when slowing into the glacial. Yet the land of a thousand lakes has also infused Solothus with an ear for eerie melodic sorcery and tastefully ripping guitar solos to compliment the riff after riff of hammering granite.”
10 | Josiah Johnson | World’s Not Gonna End
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Josiah Johnson – a former and founding member of the chart-topping band The Head and the Heart — has begun a new musical journey in 2020. Like many before him in need of recovery and self-love, Johnson has learned to cope with ghoulish feelings of self-doubt and he does so with new collaborative tools and creative blueprints in tow, buoyed by a single idea: no matter what happens, the world will still turn and you’re still here. This sentiment permeates through his thoughtful, uplifting single World’s Not Gonna End. “This is celebratory,” Johnson said of the song. “It’s the letting go of every little misstep — or even every little success that defines you. You made some sort of mistake and you’re bringing yourself to task for it on a loop, and you don’t need to. Like, this not the end of the world even though my brain is telling me that it is. This will get resolved. This will be a tiny mote in the river of the universe. One of the billion of things that happen in the course of a lifetime.”
11 | Nick Storring | Now Neither One Of Us Is Breaking
THE PRESS RELEASE: “For the past six years, Toronto-based composer Nick Storring has been generating a unique body of deeply personal work, painstakingly created by layering his own performances on a wide assortment of acoustic and electromechanical instruments. My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell — a heartfelt, albeit oblique, homage to Roberta Flack — is his first vinyl release and sees his overdub-rich music taking a lush and nocturnal turn. Many of the compositions foreground his primary instrument, the cello, making the connection between his unique approach and orchestral music all the more explicit. While the record is haunted by wistful, introverted romanticism, its repeated hurtlings into psychedelic texture, bent pop-derived shapes, and gestures harvested from the musique concrète lineage, ensure that its trajectory remains a disorienting one.”
12 | Trevor Knight | Keep On Swinging
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Emerging singer-songwriter Trevor Knight is a recording artist, pianist and singer-songwriter hailing from the dirt roads of Minnesota. Influenced by soul-pop and great hooks, Trevor writes meaningful ballads on his piano to inspire others through his lyrics. His sound was developed while being apart of an a cappella group at Dartmouth College. His new single Keep On Swinging is a dedication to his father and how he inspired Knight to never give up on his dreams. The song touches on Trevor’s life growing up being surrounded around an athletic baseball loving household and not making the team. Putting this into life lessons this taught Trevor to never give up in life and to fight the odds against him. He hope to inspire others through his lyrics and thanks his dad for always being his number one fan throughout life.”
13 | Frazey Ford | Holdin’ It Down
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Vancouver soul-Americana artist Frazey Ford will release her third album U kin B the Sun this Friday, Feb. 7. The acclaimed new album is at turns ecstatic and heavy-hearted, gloriously shambolic, and deeply purifying. Today, Ford shares the album single Holdin’ It Down, which sees her hypnotic vocals soar over a percussion-soaked groove. The powerful track brings a confident determination to its expression of weary perseverance. “I would say that Holdin’ It Down is influenced by Angie Stone circa 2002,” explains Ford. “To me it’s about an embodied sense of female resilience and self reliance through generations mixed with the urge to rest and trust in another.”
14 | Cowboy Mouth | Jenny Says (Jenny 20)
THE PRESS RELEASE: “It has been said that on a bad night Cowboy Mouth can do no less than then blow the roof off, and on a good night they’ll save your soul. That’s as true in 2020 as it was when they first burst out of New Orleans in 1990 and tickled the Top 40 with Jenny Says. The song helped propel the band onto the national club and festival scene — cementing Cowboy Mouth’s place as one of the most powerful, durable, and consistently entertaining rock and roll bands on the circuit. 2020 finds the band embracing their roots while also looking ahead to the future with Jenny Says (Jenny 20). According to Fred “What can I say? A good song is a good song. Every once in a while as a songwriter you get very lucky. I know I did with Jenny Says. The song still packs a powerful wallop and remains relevant two decades later. Jenny 20 is what Jenny Says would have sounded like if we had written it in 2020 instead of 1992. We wanted to freshen it up a bit while keeping the original energy. Jenny 20 is all about reminding everyone about the bands history, while at the same time paving the way forward for new material!”
