Thursday, March 21, 2013

Aquarius Records Review + 2013 June Tour / Record Release + Vinyl

Found out yesterday that Aquarius Records reviewed our first record that we released in late July 2012. The good news was that he had sold a bunch of the CD and Tape Cassette and wanted more. Here is the Review - which can also be found at www.aquariusrecords.org - then search AntikytherA :

"Another outfit from the Pacific Northwest, trafficking in a sort of psychedelic doomy drift, who are friends of aQ faves Megaton Leviathan, which makes sense, the two groups occupying a similar space, but each most definitely carving out their own distinct sonic niche.
The first track here is a slowly swirling sprawl of pulled apart riffs and layered chordal crunch, crumbling distortion, and softly shimmering textures, starting out almost formless, but gradually coalescing into a churning slo-mo dirge, that manages to infuse its metallic creep with plenty of melodic jangle, the sounds chiming and keening, almost like a more riffy Sunroof!, it's not until nearly the end of the track before the drums kick in, and when they do, it's not so much propulsive or rhythmic as it is abstract and textural, the billowing clouds of psychedelic buzz wrapped around this skeletal doom drum dirge, the sound never really darkening, instead, remaining sort of blissed out, the guitars becoming more jagged and riffy, but the whole thing remaining pretty drifty.
The second track is where things get properly doomy, or as properly doomy as these guys get, the sound immediately exploding into a woozy, lumbering creep, replete with thick buzzing distortion, deep dramatic sung/spoken vox, and plenty of melody, tranced out and mesmeric, sounding a bit like OM with LOTS of guitars, a slow burn psych-doom epic, that slithers swaggers and gradually builds to soaring squalls of tangled psych guitar freakout, slipping from metallic dirge, to parts almost poppy and back again, hooks galore, but buried beneath the crumbling buzz, the song laced with occasional bursts of mathed out chaos, and often locking into tarpit hypno-rock grooves, the whole thing totally epic and majestic, but more psych than doom, more noise/post rock than metal, but with enough of doom AND metal to keep metalheads satisfied. That said, while these guys are self professed psychedelic doom gazers, we could easily imagine folks discovering this from a whole different angle, instead of psychedelic doom, something more like heavy, doomy psych. Maybe there's not much difference, but to our ears, this definitely falls further in the realm of heavy psych, the doominess just adding some serious heft.
Case in point, the 14 minute closer "An Unnatural Light", which takes a sort of Sabbathy almost stoner doom riff, and stretches it way out, repeating it over and over, the track totally tranced out, that riff, all clean guitar, swathed in clouds of cymbal shimmer, and squiggly swirls of psych guitar filigree. It's almost 5 minutes before the song really kicks in, and even then, the guitars remain clean, and almost jangly, a little bit angular, wreathed in FX, the bass sinewy and super melodic, the vocals slipping from deep monk-like chant, to full on wail. Then a few minutes later, the distortion swoops in, and finally, it begins to sound truly metallic, churning, heaving heaviness, but somehow, still sort of warped and tripped out. There's a long stretch where the guitar drops out, leaving mostly bass and drums, which reminds us a lot of Three Mile Pilot, dark and post rocky, from there on out, it's a slow build to an FX drenched, blown out psych guitar finale, all swirls of heavily flanged riffage and pounding dense drumming.
Way recommended for fans of Megaton Leviathan obviously, but really, anyone into heavy psych and psychedelic doom will flip for sure."


Thanks for the review Aquarius! 



Currently: Preparing to go back into the studio in Mid April to record 3+ new songs. One is around 22-23min long, the others between 10-12min long. SToked. This album will be shared by our drummer Dave Wolf. THe last Recording from July 2012 had Matt Foley. This New Recording yet to be named will be pressed to Vinyl! 


We will be having a Record Release Party/Show on Friday June 14th in Portland, and then we take off for Tour the next day:


Tour Schedule looks like this currently:


June

15-----San Francisco CA
16-----Santa Cruz CA
17-----Los Angeles CA
18-----TBA
19-----TBA
20-----Las Cruces NM
21-----San Antonio TX
22-----Austin TX
23-----TBA
24-----SAnta Fe NM
25-----Flagstaff AZ
26-----Las Vegas NV
27-----TBA
28-----Nipomo CA
29-----SAn Luis Obispo CA
30-----TBA
JULY
1------Monterey CA
2------Oakland CA
3------Arcata CA