Heavy Temple on Bandcamp | Heavy Temple on Facebook | Heavy Temple on Instagram | Heavy Temple

Heavy Temple are three sisters of the sonic cloth who want to take you on a trip. “We came here to do three things,” says High Priestess Nighthawk, “Rock ’n Roll is one of them.” After a strong self-titled debut and an even stronger follow up, “Chassit”, the band has plans to record their third album this summer.

Catch the band at RPM Fest and Muddy Roots Music Festival in August, and Shadow Woods Metal Fest and Descendants of Crom in September.

“Philadelphia power trio Heavy Temple perform a refreshingly organic concoction of psychedelic doom-laden swagger, space rock exploration and rumbling 70’s fuzz.” -Liam Yates, Metal Hammer (UK)

“Find out why King’s novels [‘The Dark Tower’] just found their perfect stoner soundtrack.” – Sean Frasier, Decibel Magazine

“There is something strangely mesmerizing about this band’s infectious grooves and swirling soundscapes, making Heavy Temple the sort of band you want to come back to time and time again.” –Matt Bacon, Metal Injection

YOB official site | YOB on Facebook | YOB on Bandcamp | YOB on Instagram | YOB on Twitter

Epic, crushing, and heavy beyond words, YOB has achieved legendary status in recent years due to their unmatched aesthetic and incredible body of work. Formed in 1996 in Eugene, Oregon under the leadership of doom metal mastermind Mike Scheidt on guitars and vocals, the group initially released a three song demo tape in 2000 that garnered them international attention. Drawing comparisons to groups like Neurosis, Sleep and Electric Wizard, YOB succeeded in developing modern sounding doom metal that hearkened back to the classics.

In 2002, YOB released their debut album Elaborations of Carbon followed by Catharsis in 2003, a three song record that clocked in at a colossal 50 minutes. The buzz about YOB was beginning to grow and the trio began to tour more extensively. Remaining quite prolific during this period, YOB continued to release an album each year with The Illusion of Motion coming in 2004 followed by The Unreal Never Lived in 2005. Despite all the momentum, YOB disbanded in 2006.

In 2008 the band returned from hiatus and has remained strong ever since with Travis Foster on drums and Aaron Rieseberg on bass. Reinvigorated and reinspired, YOB released The Great Cessation in 2009. It was doom with a psychedelic twist, a sound that Pitchfork referred to as “cosmic doom.” At this point in their career, the band found increased exposure in the media, with The New York Times going so far as to call them “one of the best bands in North America” after a performance at Scion Rock Festival.

For 2011’s Atma , YOB took a more organic approach to recording, opting to track everything at once. In Scheidt’s own words, he wanted the record to sound “grizzly, with hair on it.” Three year later, the group released Clearing the Path to Ascend , a record that upheld their legacy as a top notch doom metal act and was hailed by Rolling Stone as the #1 metal album of the year.

Now in 2018, the band has announced their newest album ‘Our Raw Heart’ to be released on Relapse Records. As for how Our Raw Heart will be received? Mike Scheidt (guitar/vocals) is wise enough to know that it’s out of his hands. “I think every era of Yob fan will find something on there to dig—it’s just a matter of whether they can go on the whole trip or not,” he ventures. “And that’s none of my business. The music has a life of its own. It goes out there into the world and it’s gonna be received however it’s received.”

A melancholic metal duo based in Seattle, Washington, Bell Witch have developed a potent, minimalist vein of doom, sludge, and post-metal. Named for a folkloric poltergeist, the band’s slow, heavy music is all-encompassing; it is by turns melodic, sorrowful, and brooding unto malevolence. Reviewers regularly commented on the juxtaposition of emotional power and brutal physicality in their sound.

Founder/bassist Dylan Desmond claims the band’s M.O. from day one was to compose and play aural ghost stories. A listen to their earliest recordings, such as their 40-minute long-playing demo, underscores this impression; by the time they released 2018’s Mirror Reaper, a single 87-minute track composed while in mourning, they’d come to embody that M.O.

Formed around the talents of drummer/vocalist Adrian Guerra and bassist/vocalist Dylan Desmond in 2010, the duo released an eponymous, album-length demo. Comprised of short intro and outro bookends, at its heart were two excruciatingly molasses-like extended-length jams that offered their now-trademark brand of glacial melancholy and foreboding. Received with great enthusiasm in the metal press and online, they signed to Profound Lore for their debut album, Longing, in 2012, mixed by Brandon Fitzsimons. Plodding, serpentine, and crushingly heavy, two of the album’s six tracks were over ten-minutes long, and one was over 20.

Four Phantoms followed in 2014, as did tours of Europe and the U.S., during which time, Guerra’s increasing alcohol usage became a bone of contention between the pair. Desmond’s longtime roommate, Jesse Shreibman, mixed live sound for the band and acted as a road manager. He interceded for Desmond with Guerra and vice-versa to alleviate tensions and build bridges. However, after completing their touring obligations and beginning work on another album, Desmond, frustrated by what he perceived was his own enabling of Guerra’s continued alcohol abuse, asked his friend to leave in 2015, which he did amicably. Desmond then asked Shreibman to replace him. The latter had long heartfelt conversations with Guerra, which smoothed the transition and earned the latter’s blessing.

In 2016, while composing music, Guerra passed away in his sleep due to a heart attack. He was 36. Desmond and Shreibman basically stopped playing, uncertain of how to proceed given their crushing sense of loss. They eventually reconvened in 2017, completing the group’s third studio long-player, Mirror Reaper. Released at the end of October, the 87-minute single track was recorded as an homage to Guerra and used his scratch vocals throughout. Reviews proved overwhelmingly positive, garnering the band high-profile touring dates all over the globe. In 2018, an archival gig recorded in 2015, Live at Roadburn, was issued, featuring one of Guerra’s final performances.

One of the contributors to Mirror Reaper (and indeed much of Bell Witch’s catalog) was Erik Moggridge, the singer and principal musician behind Aerial Ruin. Given his long association with Bell Witch, the intention for a collaboration between the two acts was for each to showcase songs of the other’s. That idea was pushed to the wayside in favor of an actual collaboration, which made sense given Aerial Ruin and Bell Witch’s similar thematic musical concerns with the loss of self as a requirement for a redemptive spiritual journey.

Together, they conceptually plotted and tackled a story from The Golden Bough, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer in 1890. The tale depicts the lot of a slave who emerges to slay the king only to fall prey to the same trappings of luxury, creature comforts, paranoia, jealousy, the false notion of permanence, and of course became enslaved by them all. The finished project, Stygian Bough Volume One, was released in the summer of 2020.