CULT OF LUNA, GGGOLDDD and SLOW CRUSH live at Grünspan, Hamburg (October 24th 2023)

Somehow this tour had only been in the back of my mind as happening somewhere in late October somewhere in Hamburg. Since I had already been quite busy this month I initially didn't even consider going there - until I did. After I realized that I had spend less money on merch than expected so far, I got curious on Monday night. Where was it again? Uebel & Gefährlich? Knust? Ah, Grünspan - haven't been there since December 2017! And even though the venue would be crowded the following night I luckily still got a ticket at around 1 AM.

(Maybe that was due to Paradise Lost also playing in Hamburg the same night - or it was karmatic balance for me missing out on tickets for The Hirsch Effekt coming Saturday, which is very annoying, since they're playing right here in Ruralistan, actually only a couple of minutes from my workplace in Aukrug... damnit.)

Only three hours later - if you don't count sleep, commuting and office- I was already on my way to Hamburg, so I wouldn't miss the quite early doors open.

SLOW CRUSH

Speaking of 2017. That was also the year I spontanously decided to change my Roadburn running order and found myself being enchanted by a rather unknown Belgian band on the smallest stage in the Cul de Sac.
Slow Crush have had quite a journey since then, but musically they didn't change their course. So finally meeting them again my perception of the quartet unsurprisingly hasn't changed much. The idea is the same, the execution got better, as the band has gained a lot of  experience and confidence. 

They are still so quintessentially just Heavy Shoegaze that I  can't find much else to say about them. To be honest, the band name really does almost all the work for me. Their show was weighty and weightless, here, now and far away, floating in a faint beautiful dream. Wonderful.

GGGOLDDD

My third time seeing Gggolddd in the flesh - and it has always been different. But since on this tour they were only playing songs from their incredibly moving and important allbum "This Shame Should Not Be Mine" plus their recent EP "PTSD", which follows the same electronic premise, the stylistic gap between the breathtaking "Shame" premiere at Roadburn last year and this recent show wasn't that drastic. There still was one though, because the Dutch band showed up with a sparse line-up of just four members. Switching instruments between synths, electronic drum pads and guitars brought some variety from song to song, but overall this was Gggolddd at their most minimalist (if you don't count unplugged performances).

It suited the material and once again put the presence of singer Milene Eva very much in focus, as she sang about her harsh personal experiences. I loved it, but I must admit that the show didn't resonate with everyone as much. And despite all the respect I feel for this band I hope that they will find back to - not necessarily the Post Everything Rock sound of before, but to a larger format nonetheless. Because as sufficing their approach is right now, their other shows were ultimately much stronger and I don't see very much room for further exploration of this small Electronica incarnation of the band.   

CULT OF LUNA

Ok, let's put it out there: Concerning Cult of Luna's studio work I have developed kind of a spoiled snobbish attitude. It's just not quite enough for me to sit down and listen to. Something's missing - and that something's probably for a great part Julie Christmas. Their collaboration and its live performance have raised the bar quite high. But of course the Norwegian wall of Post Metal powerhouse still is a very worthwhile live experience on its own, too.

In this tour package Cult of Luna were also a logical culmination, because it felt like you put the sound of both very different support bands Slow Crush and Gggolddd together - and then put their own ultra heavy hypnotic riff might, epic long track form and Johannes Persson's brutal growl on top of it.
Speaking of the frontman: For a band which always performs as silhouettes, with all the spots and stroboscopic effects pointed at the audience, his stagehand had to readjust his cable and mic stand quite often, because he messed it up during Rock star posing, haha.

Boy, have I been fucking spoiled this month! It sounds and also feels a little arrogant to notice that I've seen at least two - maybe three - shows recently, which were definitely even more colossal than this mountainous Post Metal asteroid. But if you don't have the comparison to Laibach's "Alamut" and Swans yourself and call me a delusional fantasist now - I get it. Because, man, what a force are these six guys!

Cult of Luna (without Julie) still won't be an album band for me soon though. Technically they bring enough variety with interesting rhythmic shifts (always convenient to have two drummers) and atmospheric layering, but apart from my favorite tracks of the night, there's still a lot of stuff, where the songwriting and the constant over the top aggressive yelling just doesn't speak to me much.
It's a huge, enormously impressive facade, which does a fantastic job of intimidating and overwhelming you if you experience it towering in front of you live, but I'm not sure if there's always actually a lot of depth behind it. Or in simpler words: It's just not for always and everwhere for me, so even though I highly enjoyed the show, I was also glad that it ended when it did, just in time before it became a task.

So that was my Tuesday night this week. Pretty awesome. Clearly one of the most well spent this year. Would gladly watch all three bands once again.

MARC URSELLI'S STEPPENDOOM - SteppenDoom

You bought a twelve-string bass. Not with twelve strings in a row, but with the regular four strings and two thinner extra strings attached to each of them, so every note you play automatically has two overtones. What do you do with it?
Let's play some doom metal! Yeah, that sounds nice. I wish I could also sing three notes at a time, that would fit so perfectly. Oh wait, there are singers out there who can exactly do that!

Ok, this is not exactly how producer Marc Urselli's many years long journey of creating this album started. But there's also a bit of truth in it. If you want to know more about how this "all star" project of doom and indigenous throat singing came to be, I recommend you consider checking out the artbook CD version of "SteppenDoom"!

AND SINCE I'VE ALREADY WRITTEN ANOTHER AT LEAST MEDIUM-IN-DEPTH REVIEW OF THIS ALBUM HERE ON VEILOFSOUND.COM, I will treat this following text more as an addendum and mainly focus on the haul of the awesome physical product.

MARC URSELLI'S STEPPENDOOM - SteppenDoom (white/müritzblau marbled vinyl LP + clear 7" + artbook CD) (2022)

Yes, I went full let's get myself an early Christmas present from Magnetic Eye Records on this one and purchased the box set, which contains most of the other available formats and adds a couple of extras.

Obviously the most basic version - the digisleeve CD - is missing in the box, but I can tell from afar that it's probably a miniature variant of the LP gatefold with the disc containing the same six regular tracks as its big relative.

On its own the vinyl is available in black and two different coloured version based on red and yellow, while the one in the box set comes in a mountaintop style marbled mix of light blue and white. The gatefold looks great and comes with a sheet for the basic credits.

So if you dig records and are mainly interested in the music, you already have a great album with this.

What you're missing though are the two bonus tracks. And with one of them lasting for thirty-three minutes that's quite a respectable amount of music.

The only physical format which gives you the whole eight tracks is the luscious artbook CD. So if you don't want to go for the whole box, this version of "SteppenDoom" is the one I would recommend the most. Not only the music, but also the photographic art plus the extended credits and liner notes really make this item the heart of the whole release.

There's still a little bit more in the box though! In fact those are the first things you'll see when you open it: prints of three photographs, which also appear in other places of the artwork and photobook - and a neat transparent 7" which again features the two bonus tracks.

And before you're doing the math: Yes, the second one of those - which features the most guest musicians of all tracks, including Dave Chandler (St. Vitus), Wino (The Obsessed), Norman Westberg (Swans), Anders Møller (Ulver) and Alexey Tegin (Phurpa) - is of course not the complete half-hour version, but edited down to a tenth of the original length. That doesn't capture the whole well... Phurpa/Ulver/Swans style meditative grandiosity of it, but it's still something, right? Ok, one could argue why this isn't a 12" extra LP, but since we already have the CD I'm down with this ehm... radio edit. 

So, since I've now finally started to mention some of the participants, I will quickly summerize, what this project actually is.

"SteppenDoom" is the more than successful merger of the worlds of droning doom - think Bong and Sunn O))) or recently Bong-Ra and Rinuwat - with the primeval power and astonishing diversity of the world's indigenous throat singing traditions. Not all of those are covered, since there are also for example forms of overtone singing in South Africa, Sardinia or famously among Tibetian monks. But we have features from the Russian republic of Tuva, where this form of music is the most common, Mongolia and Tanya Tagaq as a representative of the North-American Inuit.
Other big names on the throat singing side are Huun-Huur-Tu, Yat-Kha and the Alash Ensemble, while on the instrumental doom side you're very likely to recognize players from Paradise Lost, Cult Of Luna, Neurosis and Sleep.

The basic skeletons of all tracks were provided by the Swiss-Italian producer Marc Urselli himself. You don't need to care about his Grammy fame, but over eighty-five albums with John Zorn or examples like his work with Toby Driver, Arthur Brown and the jazz metal trio Kilter should indicate that the man knows what counts.

Production-wise alone "SteppenDoom" is an immersive listening experience full of fantastic details. This whole project is more than a well-produced conceptual idea. No, this amplification of ancient vocal art with deep and slow metal transcends the premise of its ingredients and lays bare the deepest roots of doom in a profound place far beyond Black Sabbath.

This is magical stuff. And the doomiest doom of 2022. (But since I've bought this box you probably already guessed that I like it quite a bit.)