Veil of Stuff feat. BONG-RA, IVAN THE TOLERABLE, PONTE DEL DIAVOLO and THE SHITS

1, 2, 3 aaand it's time for another roundup of my last for reviews on Veil of Sound, as always - if I own it - with some pictures of the physical media.

IVAN THE TORABLE - Chromophobia (Crystal Clear vinyl 2LP) (2026)
[MY REVIEW ON VEIL OF SOUND.COM ]

Not only am I pretty satisfied with my review, if I daresay so, but unbelievably when it was published this double album actually was Oli Heffernan's most recent release. Of course now, as a couple of months have passed, I'm behind again, because the prolific Psychedelic / Ambient / Jazz / Electronic artist has already put out new stuff.

This album with the serious background of the death of an important friend and collaborator however still remains an important beacon in Ivan The Tolerable's discography. Based on minimalist ideas, but ornamented in countless creative ways plugged from the history of Psychedelic Electronic music, these fourteen tracks just emit a special radiance between profound weight and floating lightness.

The simplistic artwork and the as transparent as transparent goes vinyl are of course a match. Perfection.

PONTE DEL DIAVOLO - De Venom Natura (transparent green vinyl LP) (2026)
[MY REVIEW ON VEIL OF SOUND.COM ]

The two-basses-powered Italian Blackened Post Punk Prog Doom Metal sensation is back with their second full album for friends of Healthyliving, Kothi Tuhoa, Gggolddd, Maggot Heart, Brutus, Shaam Larain and everything between. With select guests on duet vocals, theremin, clarinet, trombone and more, each song shows new facets of Ponte Del Diavolo's sound. Charismatic front witch Erba leads the group from highlight to highlight until the album ends - way too early - with a crowning Bauhaus cover. What a banger!

The record comes in a gatefold with lyrics on delicously poisonous green vinyl. Nice.

BONG-RA - Esoterik (transparent orange with black smoke vinyl LP) (2026)
[MY REVIEW ON VEIL OF SOUND.COM ]

Holy Egyptian Stargate Space Jesus! Jason Köhnen takes Bong-Ra full circle... again... and even fuller than before. After the switches from an Electronic solo project to a massive Doom Metal band, to Doomjazz influences and then to bringing back the breakbeats together with tons of oldschool Godflesh and Ministry worship on previous albums, "Esoterik" continues on the Industrial Metal path, but also sees Colin Webster return on the saxophone and layers all its organic and electronic, crushing, atmospheric and jazzy noises in an overwhelming more is more Blut Aus Nord storm.

Sick stuff and a solid presentation by Debemur Morti Productions (unnecessarily small font for the lyrics though) with a nice vinyl colour.

THE SHITS - Diet Of Worms (2026)
[MY REVIEW ON VEIL OF SOUND.COM ]

And finally we got new bowel actions from Leeds with the second full-length album of The Shits!

Their "Diet Of Worms" is a brutally repetitive stomper with heavy Crust Punk / Sludge / Noxious Rock'n'Roll riffs, deafening guitar Noise and vocals which hate themselves as much as they despise the listener. It's as real and nasty as it's absolutely fucking glorious! A fourty-three minutes boot kick into the jaw - if you like that kind of thing. For fans of La Muerte, Fetish 69 and good old English anger.

Now let's just don't ask ourselves what was used to paint the cover picture - and shhh please ignore that that whole phrase in the beginning of my VoS review about me surviving a Shits show "without being hit by gobs of spit, half-empty beer cans or ball-sweat flavoured handshakes of their frontman" was completely recycled from my Roadburn 2023 live review. But hey, sometimes you just cannot hit the nail on the head any more precise than you already did, right?

Roadburn 6x6

Maud The Moth / Brutus

Yes, I'm not done with festival content yet!

Last year I revived the Roadburn 6x6 series (=me taking 6x6 cm live shots with an Adox Golf folding camera on Ilford Delta 3200 film). This year I continued the tradition - and next year I'll probably bury it. 

Why? Well, last time I stopped after Friday, because my shutter cable was broken. This time I just wasn't feeling it enough.*
It's just a bit too much of a hassle. You always have to consider whether a show can be shot with it, then you get the thing out, you have to fumble the shutter cable out of your pocket without losing any of all the other stuff you keep in there in the process... Then you don't want to contemplate an eternity when to take your precious picture - and right after you have taken it something visually more interesting happens.

You forget to spool to the next frame after Maud The Moth, which leads to an actually very cool double exposure with Brutus. (see above) But then in a brain fart you're so determined to not do that again that you spool forward twice and waste one of your only twelve  frames.

Nah... of course I like some pictures, but I think I will rather shoot smaller shows on medium format again instead of Roadburn. Already got enough stuff on my overstimulated mind there anyway.

But that being said here's the rest of the bunch of pictures I took:

The Shits

Poison Ruin

Yrre

Judasz & Nahimana

Esben And The Witch

Julie Christmas

Bo Ningen

France

Ad Nauseam

Bell Witch

Under the Surface & White Boy Scream

* What I only realized the next morning was that after I had decided to quit shooting with the Adox I probably dropped and forgot my shutter cable in the Paradox anyway.

 

Duet of Disgust feat. GRAVE DESECRATOR and THE SHITS

Until just over one week ago I somehow still felt as if it was April, because my mind was so occupied with Roadburn Festival and its aftermath. Only at A Colossal Weekend I realized that time was actually moving on, not only because I was making many new live music memories, but also because I got several mails about new albums being released, which I had either pre-ordered or received a promo of long ago, always thinking: I'll write something about that later. There's still a lot of time, right?

Add other mailorder and merch table purchases and you'll see that an intimidating ton of stuff has accumulated on my to-do-list. Where to start catching up on all of this?

Well, I'll just begin with the grossest, filthiest shit!

GRAVE DESECRATOR - Immundissime Spiritus (2023)

They hail from Brazil, sport the stage names Butcherazor, Black Sin, Damnation and Mkult and play old school Blackened Death Metal. Wait! Is this a time capsule and Grave Desecrator are actually just an alter ego of early Sepultura or Sarcofago? No, that's not the case. But yes, it kind of also is.

Because these guys really honour all the traditions established by their predecessors including the washed-out cavernous sound, the vocals with way too much delay and the lyrics in probably painfully cringy English you are glad you can't even understand - and they lean into those clichés gloriously.

Ok, the part about the production needs clarification. Because there's one major difference which sets "Immundissime Spiritus" apart from Brazil's 1980's proto-Thrash/Death/Black Metal classics. Under a realistic closer look most most of the extreme stuff from that period soundwise is barely even listenable and just gets forgiven for its historic and nostalgic value. Grave Desecrator however maintain all the original ferocity and evilness - you won't here one single second of compromise on this album -, but you can still actually enjoy their album on headphones.

And to be absolutely honest about the lyrics: I haven't read them, so maybe they carry really deep philosophical insight about the inner and outer workings of the human condition. But let's be real: Not only are these songs called "Death Misery Ecstasy", "Occult Bewitchment" or "Rapists From the Cross", but Grave Desecrator also double down on their unhinged celebration of the sick, silly and unholy in Metal by covering acclaimed aesthete GG Allin's "Fuck The Dead". I rest my case.

Maybe I should also mention that the arrangements and musicianship on this album are really top-notch, but I'm not sure if these guys even want you to know that. One thing is for sure however: "Immundissime Spiritus" couldn't possibly be more addictive and pure, heretically headbanging fun!

Alongside Tilintetgjort's "In Death I Shall Arise" this is my most played, favorite Extreme Metal release of the year so far. Putrefying perfection!

THE SHITS - You're A Mess (2023)

So you like your filthy smacking a little less necromantical and desecrating? Something more down to earth and real?

Down to earth as being forced to rub gobs of snot into your face from the curb with a boot in your neck? As real as getting The Shits on that infamous nightmare bowl from Trainspotting? Not in Scotland though. Is Leeds, England close enough?

If you've been at The Spark (the official pre-Roadburn warm-up night) or at least have read my report about it, you'll know what flavour of dirt awaits you on "You're A Mess".

The Shits murdered Psychedelic Rock, wrapped its skin around a heavy bat with Crust spikes and powerglued this weapon to the unwashed hands of a rabid Punk on cold cocaine turkey. It's like Rocket Recordings took a look at their roster and said: Temple Ov BBV, Gnod, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, that's all fine and crushing and politically aware, but doesn't it miss the sensation of a drunk bloke waking you up in the middle of the night, burping into your face and peeing onto the rug that holds your room together?

We're all hideous assholes, "Ugly, Worthless", alone. We're a bludgeoned mess, waiting in the hotel room of life for nothing. We also regret nothing though, because this is all meaningless bollocks anyway.
The Shits just hold up a mirror and smash it on us. Again and again. This album is the soundtrack to which we pull out the shards and splinters. It's a bloody mess.

Damn, look behind you! Sorry that you were distracted by reading this, but someone just drew penisses on your Stooges records!

ROADBURN FESTIVAL 2023 • THE SPARK: Wednesday, April 19th

- Canned Beer, Chlamydia and Digestive Disaster! -

feat. MAI MAI MAI, POISON RUÏN and THE SHITS

Wow. That Wednesday was only eight days ago, but so much has happened since then! I've even already been to another show (King Dude) in Hamburg after the whole festival marathon. Ok, Stephan - take a breather and rewind...

Wednesday. Just like the day before I fell out of bed quite early - indeed early enough to quickly write a review of the Tori Amos show in Hamburg the night before, so I wouldn't have to peel those beautiful memories out of my brain after the overstimulation bombardment that is Roadburn Festival.

Luckily most of my stuff had already been in my car since Tuesday, so there was only a small rest to think of. And of course I forgot the nice little thermal packs for my even nicer new little cool box anyway. I also didn't bring a power bank for my phone, so yeah, for the next trips I will finally create a check list to avoid those annoyances. Congratulations to myself though for bringing two pairs of shorts! This day of arrival really was the only one when those could actually be useful.

My drive from Northern Germany to the Southern Netherlands was sunny, relaxed and full of anticipation. My bungalow twenty minutes north of Tilburg was a strange mix of "wow, I have a whole house to myself!" and "why does the common lavatory has to be just a wafer-thin wall away from my bath room"? Even though there were some other issues, all in all I was satisfied, especially given the circumstance that my initial hotel had canceled my ass out of the blue, so this really was a more than sufficient emergency option. 

Fast forward commuting to Tilburg, getting the festival wristband and entering the 013 for The Spark, the traditional entrance free three-band warm-up show formerly known as Rock'n'Roll Hideout in the Cul de Sac. Boy, that club wouldn't be able to handle the amount of people which were already gathering in front of the Next Stage now! Coming to Tilburg early seems to be a growing trend.

I hadn't been doing any homework on this night, but I was already at least a little bit familiar with the opener from a split seven inch with Sly & The Family Drone + Dead Neanderthals.

Electronic solo artist Mai Mai Mai entered the stage in an anonymous bee mutant suite and graced the room with buzzing drones, samples, sometimes almost silly melodic snippets and weirdly syncopated rhythmic ideas, all being used as a soundtrack to video projections between the poles of epic nature and its conquest by civilsation. Interesting, very experimental stuff with booming bass passages that made every bone in your body vibrate and redrew the map of your inner organs. Phat!

Preferring a central front row spot sometimes comes with risks. In case of this show the frequently occurring dangers, namely gobs of spit, flying half-empty beverage cans and ball-sweat-flavoured handshakes all had the the frontman as their epicentre. Luckily I could evade those perils - but even if not, it absolutely would have been my own fault. The band was called The Shits and had a penis in their scribbly band logo after all! So what else would you expect?

Yes, this was definetely punk. Musically though this new band on the roster of Rocket Recordings, who celebrated their 25th anniversary at Roadburn, was rather a super heavy and dirty Crust Sludge affair with a hypnotic Psych edge. Mean antisocial shit(s) for the Gnod / Temple Ov Bbv crowd. I even felt some sweet Saw Throat "Inde$troy" vibes. And there was also some saxophone in it, so yeah, what more do you want? Despite whatever reason the guy had to constantly search for his junk somewhere in the depths of his trousers, this was a mighty steamroller!

Punk the second. Yeah, that's not the usual quota, but these warm-up shows often have been a little different - if you can even say that in regards of a festival as diverse as Roadburn has become.

I have no degree in punkology, so please don't aks me where the alleged "Post" in the Punk of Poison Ruïn was supposed to be! This was all pretty straight forward 1980 (or whatever year is most accurate) for my amateur ears. I mean, I get that these dudes from Philly are seasoned in this stuff, performed it exactly in the required way and got the crowd moving accordingly.
For me however - after two long days and short nights in a row and with the schedule ahead of me - this was just too samey to stay longer than a couple of tunes.

So with two out of three strikes for my taste this was not the best, but still a good warm-up. Could have been improved by just turning the running order on its head I guess. But hey, why nitpick on a freebie, right? Especially since I caught no venereal disease from The Shits.

On a probably more than you want to know about my metabolism note I actually felt rather congested the following days and was relieved when I could finally take a $§&%#* again, before it got worrying.

Reviews of the following, definitely less faecal-centered festival days:

ROADBURN FESTIVAL 2023 • DAY ONE: Thursday, April 20th

- Hold Christmas Sacred! -

ROADBURN FESTIVAL 2023 • DAY TWO: Friday, April 21st

- Redefining Eternity: A Journey Through Timelessness -

ROADBURN FESTIVAL 2023 • DAY THREE: Saturday, April 22nd

- Resources of Suffering, Means of Catharsis -

ROADBURN FESTIVAL 2023 • DAY FOUR: Sunday, April 23rd

- A Constructive Criticism of Jesus and Other Brave Sunday Musings -