BLACK HELIUM ~ The Animals Are Coming (2025)

 

BIO

Black Helium are a three piece psychedelic rock band based in London. Never afraid to stray from the beaten path, Stuart Gray, Beck Harvey and Diogo Gomes fearlessly traverse aural hallucinatory soundscapes; from detuned Neanderthal rock to deep oceans of introspective blissed out psych.   

REVIEW

The new album by Black Helium 'The Animals Are Coming' is now available to buy and ready and willing to fry your brain into a heavy psych stupor. The album follows a similar pattern to the band's previous full length 'UM' with shorter songs book-ended either end by much longer, multi structured tracks. What I love about Black Helium is their capacity  to span several decades of underground music genres. The vocals are seemingly plucked from the 60's, smooth, dreamy and seemingly a safe haven, that is, until a splash of acid guitar sounding like a 70's Japanese freak out band inflames your hearing, and a hefty dose of modern sounding stoner metal intermittently infused with doom bakes what's left.

The underbelly of the album, two tracks of  spacey psych engrained with a surprisingly funky bass escorts your mind into the void and onto the more scathing 'Up On A Hill'  before 'Inside The Horror Mask' closes this excellent album with a homage to Hawkwind.

TURTLE SKULL ~ Being Here (2025)

 

BIO ~ Turtle Skull are a four-piece from the Australian East Coast serving a monolithic dose of psych-doom- pop. They’ve honed an experiential blend of warm melodies and ethereal vocal harmonies over cell-bursting riffs, motorik beats, and warbling drone. 

With Being Here, Turtle Skull have evolved. A new lineup. A fresh approach. A leap forward. While the album builds on the sonic foundations of 2020’s Monoliths, it’s a different beast. Still hefty and considered but more immediate. Made for the moment. A record that values gut instinct over perfection.

Tracked live at NoWave in Mullumbimby, with a paired-back approach to studio tweaking, Being Here captures that ‘lightning in a bottle’ energy that happens when a band fully locks in. New member Ally Gradon’s synths inject fresh energy, swirling around meaty riffs and driving rhythms. It’s expansive yet raw, drawing from the likes of Black Moth Super Rainbow, Idles and Cause Sui with a nod to the cinematic sprawl of Spiritualized and The Flaming Lips. A heavy, heady blend of melody and atmosphere.

'Being Here' was much more about good songs that we had freshly written being captured live in the moment" says Gradon. "No click, no excessive layering, no studio trickery. The only thing that wasn’t captured live was the vocals. Choosing to self-produce and mix the album gave us the chance to preserve our initial vision, even if it nearly did kill me."

The album puts a spotlight on songwriting, covering weighty subject matter, from the life-force drain of social media to the relentless march of time. But it does so with a call to stay connected, empathetic and grounded. In this way, Being Here isn’t just an album title. It’s a philosophy. A mantra. A demand to be fully present, to embrace the chaos, the beauty, the weight of it all.

THE NEW ALBUM 'Being Here'  ~ A new album of psych rock with a new line up featuring Ally Gradon on synth. Being Here is a peppery mix of 60's sounding pop rock and grainy acid suffused heavy psych. Vocal harmonies are lush and syrupy sounding similar to something The Mamas & The Papas would produce, not normally my cup of tea but with a burbling bass line laying the groundwork for edgy shoegaze fuzz a la Bardo Pond at their most caustic, I found Being Here to be a totally immersive experience. ~ Steve (Anointing The Sick Metal Blog)

ATOMICHAND ~ Live At La Parroquia (2024)

For me to get excited about a split record it has to be pretty exceptional. Lo and behold! Here's one genre bending amalgamation of the heavy stoner psych of Iglesia Atomica and deathly, thrashing grindsters Out Of Hand, that fits the bill perfectly. 

Iglesia Atomica opens the album and I've never heard them rock harder than this. A constant chatter of barbed jams squeal and shriek from the speakers, mutated from the incessant use of the wah pedal and groaning under the weight of stoner riffs, the heaviest I've heard from the band yet. 

Out Of Hand surprisingly features two members of Iglesia Atomica but any other similarities stop there. This section of the album spits deathgrind of the most poisonous kind. Angry, spiteful, with a penchant for exploring the HM-2 sound. A rollercoaster deathride, Out Of Hand live is a raging assault one minute before churning out merciless breakdowns the next.

So, a split featuring two completely different styles of music where Iglesia Atomica fries your brain in acid while Out Of Hand tramples all over the smoking remains.