MOUNTAIN MIRRORS
Jeffery:
2005 was a fantastic year for Mountain Mirrors. A new LP will be released
in early 2006. It's a dark and dynamic acoustic record, loaded with sinister
twists.
I've been working with a drummer, bassist and keyboard player
from Israel, and 'Lunar Ecstasy' is only a hint of the sound
happening here... Elad, Guy and Oren are kicking this music into
another dimension. And while 'Mother Earth' seemed to be lashing
out with fury at times... and so much deception and violence going on in the
world, the music can't help but sound as dark and twisted as it does.
- Opeth - "Ghost Reveries"
- Colour Haze - "S/T"
- Anthrax - "Anthology: No Hit Wonders (1985-1991)"
NICECAT
Carol:
2005... What a year! We started out with our search for a new drummer. Jim's constant
touring with the Illuminati wasn't leaving him enough time for Nice Cat duties. So
when Pete [formerly of LoDown] showed up for a tryout with a bottle of Jager [on ice!], we knew
we had our drummer!
But the Nice Cat highlight of 2005 was probably recording with Uncle Punchy in
Maryland. We've loved to DEATH his work with Clutch, so we grabbed the recording we'd
started here in Toronto and piled into the van for three intense days of recording and
mixing. He is definitely the man!
And of course we had good times playing shows with Totimoshi [they were strip searched on their way into Canada!], Immortal Lee
County Killers [we nearly sweat to death onstage at Call the Office!], 400 Blows and others. And of course
we had an absolute blast on a Canadian 'mini-tour' with Clutch: I probably would have gone
to these shows just as a spectator, so getting to play was awesome! And, in Montreal, I heard the best
EVER quote about Nice Cat: 'So... you are like Clutch... but less hairy.' Priceless!
Now we're just waiting for final edits on a video we filmed with our friend Delphine, and hoping
to find a home for our recording.
- Clutch - "Robot Hive/Exodus"
Are we allowed to name our own work? We were
so psyched about the Uncle Punchy mixes of our own stuff, I'd probably say we each
listened to our own [tenatively titled] 'Three Girls, Three Nights, Three Bottles' about a kajillion times!
NOVADRIVER
Eric:
2005 for Novadriver was a very mixed bag of emotions. On one hand we celebrated the
release of our second album 'Deeper High', and on the other we mourned the loss of
our bass player and long time friend, James B. Anders -those two extremes
almost make you wish for some gray area in the middle.
Nevertheless the band continues to move forward and will finish of the year
by rockin' out with Clutch -a very kick ass way to start 2006!
- Dozer - "Through The Eyes of Heathens"
- Clutch - "Robot Hive/Exodus"
- Orange Goblin - "Thieving From The House of God"
OGRE
Ross:
2005 has been one of OGRE's best years yet... We've played a lot of killer
shows with some great bands, including YOB, Earthride, Dove, Wolly
Mammoth, and others. The absolute highlight of these shows
was doing a cover of Pentagram's 'Review Your Choices' with Dave Sherman of
Earthride on vocals and then having Sherm call up Bobby Liebling on the
phone after the gig to tell him all about it... Unbelievable!
The best part of 2005, though, was recording our second album at
Mad Oak Studios in Boston [owned by Craig Riggs of Roadsaw]. We're still wrapping
up the final mix, but we're all really excited about how it sounds so far.
Stay tuned to website for updates on the
album, which hopefully will be released early in 2006.
After the album is out, we hope to embark on our first tour as well, so it looks like the
next year is gonna be as good as this one.
- The Bags - "Sharpen Your Sticks"
The best album of the year
that no one has ever heard of. Boston hard rock band from the 90's reforms and puts out a killer
mix of high-adrenaline metal-punk.
- Earthride - "Vampire Circus"
Maryland doom at its finest.
The best Southern Lord release in years [not counting Vitus reissues, of course].
- We're All Gonna Die - "The Wreck of the Minot"
Our buddies from Boston release a
PBR-fueled metal masterpiece. These guys should be huge.
Re-issue of the year:
- Gary Higgins - "Red Hash"
I had to mention this one, because it's the album I listened to more than any other
this year. Incredible downer psych-folk from 1973 gets its first major
release, courtesy of Drag City Records. Sounds sorta like the mellow stuff on Led
Zeppelin III if it were performed by American burn-outs rather than British hippies
with a penchant for Tolkein lyrics.
ON TRIAL
Nik:
This wasn't the best of years -or you could say it was the Year of the Ketchup
Effect: We spent 11 months trying to find each other, bored, noodling around, bitching, bad
vibes, not a lot of shows, and not always to the best of our abilities.
Blame it on the Christmas season, but it probably had more to do with a few
general 'speak your mind and clear the air'-sessions -anyway, suddenly all the
playfullness, welcome surprises, strength and beauty etc spewed forth. Using our diversity
as a help instead of a hindrance brought new and unexpected musics, GOOD vibrations, and so on.
We have recorded an new album in December. It will be a good one, and are looking forward to a
chance to play it for anybody, everybody -goddamn call the doctor baby, i forgot to take my pills again...
- M.I.A. - "Arular"
- The Who - "My Generation"
The Warlocks playing at Loppen in
Copenhagen [that's not a release, you say? Well, we got it all recorded in our heads!]
ORANGE GOBLIN
Ben Ward:
It's been a very quiet year for Orange Goblin on the whole. Some good things have
happened and some shit things have happened, Chris has been doing Capricorns, but basically
we've been lazy, stinking pieces of shit, too pissed-up to compile a co-herent sentence
and a general disgrace to the human race! Who cares... fuck 'em!
Songwriting has begun for the new record and hopefully we'll get to record and
release in 2006. Next year should be busier with an album planned plus US dates
in the pipeline as well as European shows to celebrate our 10 year anniversary.
We just had a big celebration in London with Scissorfight and Blood Island Raiders... which
was nice! You can't make a corpse without taking a life!
- Municipal Waste - "Hazardous Mutation"
- Grand Magus - "Wolf's Return"
- Capricorns - "Ruder Forms Survive"
ORANGE SUNSHINE
Guy:
2005 -Orange Sunshine, a year of transition: A Japanese and a Dutch
re-release of our first album, called 'Homo Erectus' [released on vinyl in Japan].
Then of course the 10th Roadburn Festival where we were granted the
honour of playing at the afterparty, and the Stoned From The Underground
festival in Erfurt, Germany where we had to improvise: Our bass player Mischa got such
a serious ear damage that he had to stop with Orange Sunshine!
Our friend Antal from The Zippies did a few shows on the bass after
the Summer to help us out, but we had to look further for a new bass-player. Instead
we got two: ex-Incense singer / guitarist Selwyn is our bass player with the new 'Al Naafiysh'
proto-doom project, and mehdi, ex-guitarist of hardcore band Shorttime and
graphic designer of Dodspill is handles bass-duties for the motor-blues set,
which sounds nowadays closer to the early Blue Cheer sound than we ever did.
We did not many shows due to a lack of bass players and our US tour with
Annihilation Time got cancelled coz' their singer was attacked by a crackhead, but
we'll be back in 2006...
Three records of 2005? hmmm, don't know: I hardly buy new music, but Randy
Holden's 'Population II' re-release on vinyl finally gave me a good-quality
version of his killer music. Talkin' about contemporary bands: High on Fire, Goatsnake and
Unida are my favourites, though Electric Wizard's show on Roadburn was
fabulous!
ORESUND SPACE COLLECTIVE
Scott:
The Oresund Space Collective started off as a jam project, bringing together the talents
from members of Mantric Muse, Bland Bladen and Gas Giant. When things started coming
into focus, Oresund Space Collective became a real band. We played
our debut concert in February to a great crowd, playing for 3 hours straight
until 5'o clock in the morning. We did another gig in May, and after some technical
problems the spaceship finally took off. Both concerts are available for download
at www.archive.org.
In July we recorded our debut CD, which was totally improvised as always. Over the
last half of the year we have had some amazing jam sessions. These are downloadable
in MP3 format from our web site.
2006 will be a great year for us. Our debut CD will be released
in January through the Transubstans label, and the CD launch party will be on Jan 21st
in Copenhagen. In addition, we will release 7 CD-r's with the best of our Jam sessions.
These will be available for FLAC download including high resolution artwork
or you can buy the album.
We hope to play more gigs in 2006 and we have also booked the studio
for Feb 10-11th to record our second album which will be a double CD.
Keep downloading our jams and join us in space.
PALE DIVINE
Darin:
2005 seemed like the year that would not end. Lots of ups and downs for Pale Divine, first
our bassist Jim Corl decided to pack it in... which sucked
because Jim was a great bass player and a good friend. Like the saying goes
however "when one door closes another one opens" and in this case we
had the opportunity to do a short tour of Europe [with Place of Skulls and Rising
Dust] centered around the prestigious Doom Shall Rise festival and Belgian Doom Night.
Our friend [and fellow Falcon member] Perry Grayson was kind enough to come along and fill
in for Jim. Perry did an oustanding job and if not for him we wouldn't have been able to
do it!
Unfortunately while on tour we received news from home that our former bass player Larry
Stout died tragically in an automobile accident [some of you who saw us at
SHoD II will remember Larry]. This of course came as quite a shock since Greg
and I had just seen him a few weeks earlier at one of the last shows we did before
heading to Europe. Larry was an awesome guy and he will be sadly missed -R.I.P.
Probably the most positive thing to come about during 2005 was
finding our current bass player John Gaffney. John was like a godsend
and totally fit the bill as the bass player we've always wanted and has brought
a lot to the table already creatively. John's been with us since June but has
played a handful of shows with us as well as The Templars of Doom fest in
Indianapolis [which was another killer fest we had the priviledge of
playing in 2005] with our great friends the Gates of Slumber and
Orodruin and the mighty Reverend Bizarre... among others of course.
Finally we finished 2005 off by demoing four new songs to be included
on our next full-length offering tentatively titled "Cemetery Earth." The titles
of the new tracks are as follows; 'Broken Wings', 'The Eyes of Destiny', 'I Alone the
Traveller' and 'Cemetery Earth.' Songs will be posted on our website in their entirety
as soon as their finished so keep an eye out.
Thanks to everyone who came to the shows and/or bought our merchandise during 2005!!!
- Candlemass - "S/T"
- Porcupine Tree - "Dead Wing"
- Fields of the Nephilim - "Mourning Sun"
PELICAN
Trevor:
Much like the year that preceeded it, 2005 proved to be the busiest
year the band experienced yet. Seems like the momentum just won't let
up, but it's been great for us since we seem to perform our best under
high pressure.
We started the year by recording our new album 'The Fire
in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw', which was a stressful but
wonderful experience. We then released a single for 'March Into the
Sea', a limited live DVD, and a split LP with our friends Mono. We then
justified Hydrahead's expenses for these numerous releases by touring,
and touring, and touring.
We've never done more than four weeks of touring in a year, so in 2005
we got to know each other a whole lot better than ever before. We did
a couple weekends in the Midwest, played SXSW in Austin, went to Japan
for a week with Mono, did five weeks across the US [with Big Business,
Breather Resist, Panthers, Torche, and Red Sparrowes at various
times], did two weeks with Opeth, and finally two weeks in the UK. All
the while we've been planning our tours for next year [the first six
months of 2006 alone will see us on the road more than all of 2005 -
whew!]
Thanks to everyone who came out to shows and purchased [or listened]
to our releases - we're flattered by the great response we've had to
the band and our shows.
- Jesu -"S/T"
- The Life and Times - "Suburban Hymns"
- Four Tet - "Everything Ecstatic"
PENANCE
Brian:
As many of your are aware Penance called it a day in Spring of 2005.
Founding guitarist Terry Weston had rejoined the band in early 2005 and we
had begun writing the follow-up to 'Spiritualnatural.' Unfortunately the
band became 5 people with 5 differing views about how the band could work
out and we could not find a common ground. And so Penance imploded.
Mike Smail continues to fill the drum stool in Internal Void and he also has an
acoustic duo with former Penance bassist Ron Leard. They are called DOS.
Mary Bielich and Matt Tuite are members of Pittsburgh political
punk/hardcore band Behind Enemy Lines. Matt is also a member of Pittsburgh
stoner rockers The Evil Machine.
As for the rest of us -I have a few coals in the fire for upcoming one-off
projects but nothing definite to annouce for those yet. If and when they happen they
should be very cool. At this time it also appears that Terry Weston, Dave
Roman [from the 'Spiritualnatural' album and tour] and myself will be putting
a new band together, picking up where Penance left off in the Spring. Terry and Dave
had a bunch of great material intended for Penance which I hope will reach people's ears in 2006.
- Grand Magus - "Wolf's Return"
- Armor For Sleep - "What To Do When You're Dead"
- Candlemass - "S/T"
POD PEOPLE
Josh:
2005 was both a busy eventful year, but also kinda frustrating. Our
label High Beam has basically run themselves aground so we've been in
'label limbo' domestically for a while now and we're writing sooooo much
stroger material that it's beginning to frustrate us that we can't get
into the studio, comething we really wanted to do this year. However, it
does mean that we have more time to write and have more to pick and
choose from and really get a clear picture of where we're going next
year.
I also dislocated my kneecap onstage in the first minute of our set in
Melbourne in July. I played the rest of the set, but my leg has been
fucked all year as a result, then my guitar was broken after a Blood
Duster show in August. So to subvert the bad vibes, the only thing that
could make the year better was a killer tour and boy did DD and Brad
deliver one to us. We were very fortunate to do an 11 show tour of the
east coast with Elecrtic Wizard.
That would have been good alone, even if the guys were a pack of cunts.
However, they are all absolute beaut-folks and we had a blast running
rampant around the country side. We played a huge doom gig in Melbourne with
Australia's best doom acts including Whitehorse who are kinda similar
to Corrupted, Peeping Tom who are like a trady doom / rock band ala Witchcraft or Mountain, Clagg who
are a young band that mix stoner and doom in ultra
heavy doses and Swedish death metal act Dismember who happened to be in
town also played, huge night!
The tour left us all in positive spirits, I'm looking forward to 2006 as
a year to get our album in the can and out and hopefully make it to
Europe for a tour. We've some good shows coming up including a gig with
Clutch in Queensland and a bunch of new tunes to unleash.
- High On Fire - "Blessed Black Wings"
- Reverend Bizarre - "Crush The Insects"
- Yob - "The Unreal Never Lived"
QUALONE
Brian:
We just wanted to say thanks for making 2005 a great year for Qualone. This has
been our busiest and most successful year so far. We finally left Georgia a
few times and got to play for some mind-blowing crowds. We've been getting
airplay on a lot of college radio stations across the country over the past
few months and received a lot of great reviews from around the world for the CD.
John Smith is on board as our new bassist and is doing some great work and, being
an old friend, fits right in with our warped mindset. We're preparing to
enter the studio in March to record the new album and hope to be back
out on the road in April, torturing sound guys in small clubs. We're really
excited about the new stuff, and if you've seen any of the shows we've done
in the past few months, you've heard a couple of the new songs at least.
BIG THANKS to everyone who has come out to a show or bought the CD or Vinyl
or grabbed a song off of iTunes!! To the wild people of Monroe, LA and 60
Cycle for gettin' us down there! Artimus Pyledriver, The Sound Of Urchin, Trey
Anastasio, Nebula, The Thieves, Pacific Stereo, X- Raygun, Electric
Magma, Sons Of Otis, The Saint in NJ and everyone
else we've played a gig with or who has helped us out in any way this past year...
- The Mars Volta - "Frances The Mute"
- Supergrass - "Road to Rouen"
- Wolfmother - "S/T"
RAMESSES
Adam:
Ramesses has had a very eventful 2005 -we released 'We Will Lead You To
Glorious Times' in January on This Dark Reign, then 'The Tomb' in August on
Invada. Huge respect and thanks to both labels, and of course to Billy Anderson
and Cristiane Richardson.
We loved touring UK and Europe with Unearthly Trance and Debris Inc., and
played a barrage of killer gigs with Atavist, Esoteric, Red Sparrowes, The
Heads, OM, Church of Misery, Moho, Anaal Nathrakh [due to recording commitments
we missed gigs with High on Fire and Earth]. Our debut-full length is now
being mastered so look out for an early 2006 release... some track titles: 'Before the
Jackals', 'Lords Misrule' and 'Terrordactyl'.
2005 has been an appalling year for natural disasters and international catastrophes... but amazing
year for releases, so here's my top 14: Hyatari, High on
Fire, Jesu, Obituary, Cathedral, 1349, Yob, Fleshpress, Om, Mistress, Atavist, Asva, Skullflower, Nihilist! If you
can choose the best 3 from this lot knock yourself out, coz' I can't!!!
REVEREND BIZARRE
Albert:
It's a bit hard to remember what happened in 2005 -it all happened in a rush.
We played in the US, which was great. We visited lots of beautiful places, did some gigs
with the mighty Gates of Slumber and saw several old friends again. Another dream also came true: We did
some gigs with Electric Wizard. It really meant a lot to us coz' EW is one
of the few bands that we have been listening to from the beginning, and they inspired
us in many ways. Very nice people as well. We have very warm memories of
these gigs and our respect towards them just grew stronger. Their live gigs were
an amazing experience. Playing with Count Raven and Mirror of Deception here in
Finland were amazing events too.
Our latest album, 'Reverend Bizarre II: Crush The Insects' came out in 2005 as well. The first
single, 'Slave of Satan', almost topped the charts here in Finland. It got to
number 2! Unbelievable. Absurd! It seems that we're much more appreciated
in Finland now, but we don't care too much. Please don't get me wrong: It makes
things a lot easier, but in the end it's the music that counts!
I have been thinkin' about disbanding Reverend Bizarre. I grew so tired
of all the troubles we ran into last year, but luckily, we have changed a
few of our plans, and things are lookin' much better for 2006 now. I hope
things will be more at ease for us, but you never know what's going
to happen.
It is bit hard to mention my faves of 2005. I didn't buy that many new albums. I listen
to older albums alot, but I think the new Gates of Slumber is one of my
favorites. The same goes for the new Sunn 0))), 'Black One', and there's a Finnish
pop-band called Liekki that I like a lot [I think their latest album came out in 2005, but
I'm not sure though].
SHEAVY
Steve:
What can I say about 2005? Well, its been a crazy year both personally
and in terms of the band. This year we released our fifth full length album
and our first DVD video. In July we did our first tour and while it was only
a short trip [10 shows in Canada], I think that everyone will agree with me
when I say that we had a great time.
The reviews for 'Republic?' and for the 'Masonic Temple' DVD have been
very positive and despite the endlessly annoying Sabbath
comparisons, I think the album, and all our efforts this
year, are things to be proud of.
But I'm not overly fond of reminiscing so... if you're a fan you'll be glad to
hear that we have more in store for 2006. A new CD, another dvd, a longer
tour, more merch and ... it looks as though the new CD will be an indie
release as I feel its time to shed the record company burden. I know it'll be
harder to get the CD's out there but hey, at least we'll have some control over the
product!
So, 2005 was a great year and I truly hope we can keep up the pace because
we've become notorious for long lapses. It seems like forever since I worked
with Billy Anderson on the 'Republic?' mixes in San Francisco and now ... I'm
typing this from Sao Paulo, Brazil. I've been here for 3 months and I love
it! I'm teaching a little English and looking for inspiration. If you ever get the
chance, go to Brazil! Its an amazing country.
- Clutch - "Robot Hive/Exodus"
- COC - "In the Arms of God"
- Queens of the Stone Age - "Lullabies to Paralyze"
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