The Devil’s Blood
The Thousandfold Epicentre
Ván Records/Metal Blade Records

The Time of No Time Evermore, The Devil’s Blood’s 2009 debut full-length, was — ahem — bloody brilliant, one which led me to discover a whole rash of occult rock acts currently burning up black candles on foggy stages all over the world. The Eindhoven band’s ritualistic spin on the classic metal of the 70s was nothing short of spellbinding, and it has been under that spell that many have waited, like patient subjects, for the enchanting follow-up. Indeed, The Thousandfold Epicentre can best be described as enchanting, a more ethereal and mystical offering than its predecessor. With its eleven songs borne of psychedelic desire, and five of those stretching themselves like witchy fingers beyond the seven minute mark, it is a bolder and more indulgent record that leans heavily on epic orchestration as though it were an ash-stained pulpit from which the band is delivering their Satanic sermon. However, it’s stand-outs like “Cruel Lover,” “She,” and “Fire Burning” that employ the galloping, Thin Lizzy-like attack that made their debut so great, and without those, this album most surely would have gotten lost within itself.

Listen to “Fire Burning” from The Thousandfold Epicentre!

Danava
Hemisphere of Shadows
Kemado

Danava have always been able to separate themselves from other Iommi-inspired retro rockers by infusing an unabashed weirdness into all that they do. Hemisphere of Shadows, the Portland band’s third full length and first since 2008′s UnonoU, is no exception, and, in fact, the addition of a second guitarist (Andrew Forgash) means the blitzkrieg of riffs are now twined-out to inflict a maximum assault of strange. With a much shorter run-time than previous albums and a decidedly tighter focus, Hemisphere of Shadows finds Danava reigning in their druggy psych-metal jams without strangling them, and without stripping them of their cosmic, downer, prog, and occult flourishes. Danava seem to be so on point here that there’s no way they didn’t record this album at Stonehenge one white hot and foggy night, and with songs like “Shoot Straight With a Crooked Gun,” “The Last Goodbye,” “I Am the Skull,” and “The Illusion Crawls” (featured earlier this year on a split with Lecherous Gaze and Earthless) galloping around like Ichabod Crane in an Iron Claw t-shirt, Hemisphere of Shadows will find all kinds of favour with fans of ’70s freak n’ roll and fuzzy good times.

Listen to “The Illusion Crawls” from Hemisphere of Shadows!

HeavyPink
Flower and Song b/w There is a Light 7″
The Maple Forum

When Mos Generator split in 2009, they were working on an album that was going to be called HeavyPink. Well, Mr. Mos himself and friend of the Beard, Tony Dallas Reed, has taken that album’s concept and name off of the shelf on which it’s sat these last few years, dusted it off, and recorded an experimental solo project. The result is this two-song EP of mystic heaviness, and we find Reed (who sang, played all the instruments, and recorded it in his own HeavyHead studios) reaching back into the foggy past yet again, only where his current band Stone Axe channels the almighty rock, HeavyPink lays down a tremulous psych-doom that sleeps in graveyards and plays in opium dens. “Flower and Song,” then, is the moonlight-bathed A-side while “There is a Light” is the red light-dusted B-side, but both contain well-fused avant-garde and goth metal elements. Reed himself explains HeavyPink’s sounds as, ‘Master of Reality, Pet Sounds, and Into the Pandemonium all in one and produced by Phil Spector,’ so let THAT permeate your brain, but to me it’s a wonderfully unexpected noir punch from a certified cosmic rock master.

Listen to “Flower and Song” from Flower and Song b/w There is a Light 7″!