This might alienate some of our softer friends, but our interest in harder stuff is well-documented through what we’ve shared in the past. Bay Area guitar/drums duo Black Cobra is another one of them sludgy power trios and stoner duos like Om, Big Business, Weedeater & High on Fire. Chronomega, their third and the first one on Southern Lord since their inception in 2002, sees them perfect their “bulldozer” metal at last.

First off, the gigantic sound is undoubtedly due, at least in part, to the production on “Chronomega”, which is exceedingly thick. So thick, in fact, that Black Cobra are still able to deliver a devastatingly heavy album without a bassist. Metal flows in my veins

Experienced sludgeroos and born critics may not like the straightforward nonstop crush of Chronomega, but personally I think it’s an obvious step forward for the guys. Herein lies the soundtrack for a harsh madmaxian future, an era of war with machines etc. with thunderous drive and perpetual bonebreaking riffs. With the absence of a new High on Fire album and a relatively weaker Big Business album, Black Cobra reigns supreme in this department. Punishing & one of the best metal albums this year. 4/5

Black Cobra

-dave | MySpace Video

I might be stoned to death by stoner fans (or haters of this pun), but after the infamous Sleep split, I’ve come to prefer High on Fire to Om, despite always knowing Om is aesthetically and spiritually richer and more profound. That might be because of a hitherto undiagnosed ADD which results in a bias against long songs. Had I not been working on my thesis for a good eight hours, I’d have skipped the 19 minute Thebes in a breeze. Yet bearing the droning tamboura of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe aka Lichens enough that holy day, the opener Thebes became a most rewarding song, turning day into night in Egypt where dervishes summon higher spirits. The rest of the album gets even better Meditation is the Practice of Death has an amazing flute part to finish the song. Third song Cremation Ghat I is the star of the album for me, with handclaps, trancy bass and chanting..

Of course you could say I’m partial to Middle Eastern rituals, nomadic tribes & ecstatic dances — which is true, even though I’ve always lived in urban Istanbul and have never experienced any real magic apart from dosing on shrooms. — Reading Foucault’s Pendulum in the summer helped too. And what about the replacement drummer Chris Hakius. He has a huge part in this change of heart as well. He’s from Grails, Portland’s finest portal to Al-Qadim, for God’s sake!. And how can you not see Steve Albini hide behind the mixing board?.. Yes, there are so many factors for this Om record to rock, and it does rock for that matter!

It was always going to be difficult for Om to produce another Pilgrimage, that glowering beast of a record which sat itself down amongst The Wire’s Top 10 of 2007, all dressed in black, muttering weird pseudo-shamanic stuff to itself, and generally being so scary that even Edwin Pouncey couldn’t pluck up the courage to ask it to leave. To their credit, they haven’t. Nothing has surprised me more this year than the opening minutes of Thebes – tambura drone gradually being eaten into by Al Cisneros’s familiar-sounding bass. mapsadaisical

However if you’re a cynical reviewer like Pitchfork’s Cosmo Lee, you could also dismiss it with a 6.0 saying “What was once an implied spirituality, drawn out through trance-like repetition, has become spoon-fed. Perhaps this evolution was inevitable: Like Sleep, Om likely could mine their minimalism only for so long.” Make your own choice ! 4/5

Part of an unforgettable five hour set played by the mighty Om at the Uganda bar in Jerusalem.

If you are an avid trendwatcher, you must have seen the rise of the new lo-fi bedroom/garage punk/synth/psych/noise-pop whatever that’s being hard to lump together as the characteristics of it span lots of genres. I’ve dl’d my fair share of cassettes and CDRs as I sunk into the pit yet apart from some amazing artists/songs, lots of the stuff went straight to the bin. Here are some of the highlights in the key of lo-fi punk from Not Not Fun all star band Vibes, Ganglians, SF’s Brilliant Colors and also stoner rock band Eternal Tapestry and Ducktails’ Matt Mondanile’s indie rock band Real Estate.

God, these lyrics by the stoner rock duo-turned-trio Big Business are great, even though I don’t really get what he’s ranting about. From their latest album Mind the Drift on Hydra Head Records.

While you were sleeping
Been doing some thinking
Everyone’s taking a side
The Ayes all and any
The nayes half as many
There’s plan to put break in your stride
Became crystal clear when we cracked the veneer
That nobody wanted us here
We’re out of the habit, stead chasing rabbits
Goddamnit, it’s not how we planned it
Sound the alarm

Sat Sapienti is a periodical where we feature kickass songs with matching wise lyrics.

Hype Machine’s doing a Music Blog Zeitgeist for 2008 and December 15th is the last day of submission. We’ll be posting a more in depth review of 2008 in the coming days as there’s still a bit of a backlog to listen to, but here’s our preliminary top 10 subject to minor changes. 2008 was a good year with lots of great albums, but there wasn’t a definitive best even among the top 10, perhaps the age of perfectionism is a bygone dream. Enjoy!

The image is of Lehman Brothers CEO Fuld. One of the biggest losers this year!

Bar Kokhba Sextet – Lucifer
The Advisory Circle – Other Channels
John Zorn – Dreamers
Vivian Girls – Vivian Girls
No Age – Nouns
Dungen – 4
Larkin Grimm – Parplar
Black Mountain – In the Future
Bohren und der Club of Gore – Dolores
Colour Haze – All
Runner up: Nomo – Ghost Rock

One of the most frequented bands here on undomondo is Portland rockers Grails. Somehow they manage to more than one release each year and we feel like you wanna hear all about them, because they deserve it.

Their new one Doomsdayer’s Holiday has an all-out sinister aura, which sounds as if its coming off some medieval alchemy den in the Arabian Peninsula. Although there are mellow and atmospheric pieces like the “The Natural Man” or “Acid Rain” some pieces like the title track or “Predestination Blues” where Sun City Girls‘ Alan Bishop shows up for the vocals, sound like the aural accompaniment to Rabelais’ Gargantua.

The 4 piece mix drony & post-rocky elements with sludgy riffs creating atmospheric conditions that might turn the lead in your house into gold or summon a beast from the netherworld if played at the right volume and for the right duration. Out on Temporary Residence, and thanks to 5 Roses Press for the promo. Check our tumblr for more Grails videos.

R.: Can you live off your music right now?
Alex Hall: No, we all have jobs. I work as a chemist, Bill [Slater]’s a bartender, Emil [Amos] works at a homeless shelter, Zak [Riles] is a bodyguard. Interview with Grails’ Alex John Hall

Every week, we get bombarded with emails from PR guys and artists who want their music reviewed. Some of those are industry guys who’ve never checked what this blog is about, because we get stuff like U2, yet some are honest artist/readers of the blog and I’d definitely feel bad if I don’t lend an ear to their music. When I was more actively doing music in the 99-00 period there weren’t any mp3blogs/social networks even netlabels and frankly I thought it was too much of a hassle to send demos to labels and contact people, I didn’t know if my music was good enough either so I gradually stopped making music (time problems as well). Today it’s easier for an artist to contact likeminded people, find a netlabel, self-release their album etc. but it’s also getting incredibly hard to weed out the good from the bad. I really don’t know how the music scene will evolve, it seems to be in a transition phase still. Will the volume of newly released music keep increasing exponentially? Will everyone be a bedroom producer some day as everyone may get an audience these days?

Anyways, today we have Vincent Black Shadow from Baltimore, with a gnarly stoner rock mixed with punk & psychedelics. NYC based I Love you Airlines is a nu-age rock/glam duo with electronics, didn’t like the other songs but this one is pretty catchy. I’m sure you already know about HEALTH, a noise rock band from LA a la Liars. We have Doctors & Dealers from Sweden an lo-fi indie twee pop artist with smooth vocals and melodies. Boiled in Lead which is a cool mixture of progressive rock & world music and Irish Punk a la The Pogues, and what’s more it’s their 25th year in music. The bass player is also in Felonious Bosch another progressive world music band. We have the legendary oldschool rapper Steinski, preparing to release a double retrospective album on Illegal Art soon. Then there’s Take from LA’s Eat Concrete which is a lovely deal in jazzy instrumental hiphop a la Madlib, one of the best finds for me. But what I feel the best of the bunch in my mailbox this month is Capillary Action which is a math rock band from Philly, and I thought I might give them a bit more action, so it’s gonna be our next review. Cheers to everyone who’ve sent music and also to Fanatic Promotion.

I Love you Airlines – CPR
Doctors & Dealers - Snow Child
Doctors & Dealers – Summertime Love
Vincent Black Shadow – Shamanix
Vincent Black Shadow – Wooden Kimono
HEALTH – Perfect Skin
Boiled in Lead – Berber
Steinski – The Payoff Mix
TAKE – Fall in Love Again

I’ve been listening to more and more rock these days because there’s a slew of creative stuff coming out on smaller labels. Take Steel Mammoth a band who describes themselves with the following passage : “A lonesome engine cries, howling in the cruel crüel night! Nuclear nightmare, atomic style! Shadow barbarians with lazer eyes, radiation village, the black fire burning bright! Steel Mammoth brings you the sound of the post nuclear holocaust future with no hope!”

Wow, WTF are they smoking?! Aquarius records is puzzled as well : “It’s pure WTF? weirdness in the guise of a metal band.” Their music akin to driving southern rock with a crunchy guitar tone with this mock metal image & 100% unfitting lyrics. I was pretty sure this stoner trio was from the Mojave Desert in the US of A, but guess what they’re from Finland!!. Catchy hooks, desert rock grooves, southern rock vocals all kinds of bizarre proggy parts. I guess when your frontman is called Garfield Steel you are permitted to do anything in the world these days. Highly recommended.

Steel Mammoth – Blackout Leather
Steel Mammoth – Nuclear Barbarians

Now here’s a release without enough coverage. Cave-in vocalist/guitarist Stephen Brodsky’s new project alongside two guys named Johnny Coolbreeze and JR. Pet Genius is generally labeled as stoner rock and with influences like Pabst Blue Ribbon, Marijuana and Uncontrollable Libidos, you’re sure to make some kind of stoner rock. However this is not your traditional riff oriented and repetitive stoner rock as say Om or Sleep. Most of the songs are short bursts of creativite pop carefully presented in rock attitude. There’s surely some crunchy riffage as heard on “Walls of Etiquette” but most of the album is in tune with the bizarrely creative and catchy “Erase the Speed of Time”. The downside? It lasts a mere 30 minutes, which is also what makes it more addictive. Been listening to Pet Genius every day for a week straight, which is something I rarely do these days. USA’s answer to Wales’ Future of the Left.

Pet Genius – Walls of Etiquette
Pet Genius – Erase the speed of time

15 Battles – Mirrored (Warp Records) : Everybody’s been talking about “Mirrored” this year, and they kind of deserve it for getting their oddtimed dissonant music to find strange acclaim from mainstream circles as well as mathheads.
14 Deejay OM – Reheated Naan and Curry (Galapagos4) : A fine hybrid of Indian samples mixed with beats. Somehow liked it much more than Madlib’s take. Past review on undomondo.

Ólöf Arnalds – Klara

13 Ólöf Arnalds – Við og við (12tónar) : Icelandic singer Ólöf Arnalds‘ acoustic folk deserves a government grant as we get more and more interested in Iceland after listening to her debut.
12 White Magic – Dark Stars (Drag City) : Frankly I’m an utter sucker for their haunting minimalist folk, hopefully more to come in 2008.Past review on undomondo
11 Alamaailman Vasarat – Maahan (Backstage Alliance) : Finnish weirdo prog-rockers Alamaailman Vasarat didn’t fail to satisfy us with their 3rd album a highly versatile & wacky world music stuff. Circus music at its best.Past review on undomondo, The Armchair Critic review

Luke Temple – Medicine

10 Luke Temple – Snowbeast (Millpond) : Brooklyn, NY based singer & songwriter Luke Temple’s album is one of the best albums of the year, with hints of 70s psychedelia and melancholy, top quality singer songwriter pop. Past review on undomondo
09 Nostalgia 77 – Everything Under the Sun (Tru-Thoughts) : UK’s finest nujazz troupe a with an impressive effort, and they didn’t stop here and went for a second gold album as an octet. Past review on undomondo
08 Shellac – Excellent Italian Greyhound (Touch & Go) : Most critics didn’t like this album compared to other Shellac releases, but nevertheless it’s better than most of the stuff this year. Past review on undomondo. Pitchfork review

Men-an-Tol – Orange Juice and Vodka

07 Men-an-Tol – Men-an-Tol (Static Caravan) : I’ve declared my love for bearded UK folkers Men-an-Tol a few times this year, can’t wait for their debut album in 2008. Past review on undomondo
06 Fedayi Pacha – The 99 Names of Dub (Hammerbass) : Unnoticed by short sighted critics with the Burial syndrome, French dubster Fedayi Pacha’s “The 99 Names of Dub” is the most diverse dub album this year as well as the most cranked for me. Past review on undomondo

Battles – Race:in
Deejay OM – Silk dealers of New Delhi
Ólöf Arnalds – Englar og Dárar
White Magic – Poor Harold
Alamaailman Vasarat – Katkorapu
Luke Temple – Saturday People
Nostalgia 77 – Stop to make a change
Shellac – Steady as she goes
Men-an-Tol – Orange Juice & Vodka
Fedayi Pacha – Kufiq Type