prog rock Archives - Vinyl From The Vault

Doom Gong “Megagong”

sfilzen — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 17:38:48 +0000

Doom Gong “Megagong” releases tomorrow, August 26th, 2025. Romanus Records, splatter vinyl variant. YOU GUYS! This is one of the most exciting new bands we’ve seen play live in a minute – we caught them for the first time at this past weekend’s Romanus Records Fest in Indy. Space/stoner heavy psych with an impressive 7-member lineup, with THREE percussionists, two of whom share a kit. Incredible stuff. Think a mashup of Frankie and the Witch Fingers and King Gizzard Lizard Wizard, but with some dreamy synthpop + prog-nerd thrown into the mix. Super-duper nice folks too, from Louisville, Kentucky. I got a chance to chat briefly with both guitarist/main vocalist John and GONG master Dino after their set. Here’s their bio, lifted straight from their website

Formed in 2022 in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A. by 7 music school nerds, DOOM GONG has made a name for themselves internationally with their own home-baked genre, Denim Psych – a hodgepodge of psychedelic rock, jazz fusion, bedroom pop, lo-fi, contemporary classical music, as well as blood, sweat, and a lot of denim.

Having only released their first two LP’s in 2023 (DOOM GONG and Dream Behemoth), DOOM GONG has quickly become a mainstay of the psych scene in the U.S. and abroad, performing their enigmatic and seamless live shows alongside the likes of Amyl and the Sniffers, The Black Angels, BADBADNOTGOOD, Allah Las, King Buffalo, Bass Drum of Death, Death Valley Girls, HOLY WAVE, Gustaf, Ron Gallo…In 2024, DOOM GONG launched their international presence, completing two summer tours consisting of 24 shows across the eastern United States and Canada with immense reception. Soon after, the denim assemblage partnered with Romanus Records to produce vinyl of their debut album – all presses were sold out within an hour of its release. [ed note: I have a copy, just haven’t featured it here yet]

Side A of Megagong is heavy on the dreamy: synth-drenched and swirly, see especially “The Perilous Rise.’ Side B is distinctively heavier: one of my favorites on Megagong is not all dreamy (though it has moments): the single “Annihilator” which was released before the LP and currently the only track with any kind of link (I’m guessing until tomorrow) is mostly hard hard heavy prog synth with glimpses of Motörhead and Sabbath. As the title suggests “Spiral Dance of Imminent Doom” is another hard and heavy rocker (with proggy synths!) which is also supremely ass-shakey. Slightly less heavy and profoundly more frenetic is the excellent title track “Megagong.” Brilliant and otherworldly.

Doom Gong is currently on tour (not in the upper Midwest unfortunately, but I begged them to put Milwaukee on their circuit next time ’round) – this is one of those bands that you must see live to fully experience the intelligent insanity of their music.

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Moon Goons “Lady of Many Faces”

sfilzen — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 19:14:15 +0000

Moon Goons “Lady of Many Faces” 2024. Romanus Records, limited edition tricolor variant. Heavy psychedelic + spacey prog rock from Indianapolis, their third LP. If the little gnome-like wizard drawings on the cover weren’t enough of a clue, Lady of Many Faces is a fantastical trip into what I can only describe as medieval space, a cross between Devo and Black Sabbath. With song titles like “Telesmatic Figures,” “Hidden Hermit of the Hills” and “Wizard Prison” (which is one of my favorites), the imagery is a mushroom trip with steroids and synths. Space age bleep bloops one second, epic heavy metal shredding guitar the next. Wild shit! Every song is a journey, with twist, turns, and startling creatures jumping out of the darkness when least expected. While likely categorized as stoner rock (besides the other labels I’ve already slapped on above), I can’t even imagine zoning out while listening to Lady of Many Faces: it’s way too interesting. I also won’t put the “experimental rock” label on it (though it clearly is very unique, edgy and explorative) because, well, it somehow makes sense in all of its glorious weirdness. There are melodies, harmonies and clear beats (though those beats change – a lot), giving the album an element of pop. Though I can’t imagine any of these songs will make to a Top 40 playlist, ever.

The band itself seems to view their record through a prog-rock lens that’s got 50ish years of blurry goo smeared on it, never cleaned from back in the era of the 70’s epic concept album. From an article on Nuvo, frontman Corey Standifer says of the plot of Lady of Many Faces (inspired by keyboardist Brooke Rice’s dream of a three-faced woman), “There’s the Wizard, who is unfortunately in his own prison. He’s pure, but he doesn’t know it yet. Same with the ‘Hidden Hermit of the Hills.’ He’s a total nomad of sorts, who lives by his own book. But the Lady [of Many Faces] needs him in order to fulfill this prophecy of good and spreading your true potential. The ‘Doom Tomb Giant,’ however, is wanting to take that away from them. The song ‘Phantom Erasion’ is essentially the concept of wiping away all the negative forces within your life and really trying to tackle that as best as you can. The Lady has many faces, so [that equates to] many characters and many concepts. But she represents really digging inside of your inner self and exploiting your selfless soul.”

Here’s the entire album, performed in order at their record release show in Indy in November 2024.

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Pink Floyd “Meddle”

sfilzen — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 17:50:54 +0000

Pink Floyd “Meddle” 1971. Harvest Records. Vaguely trippy prog-rock, Meddle was Pink Floyd’s sixth studio LP and “is considered a transitional album between the Syd Barrett-influenced group of the 1960s and the Waters-led era of the 1970s.” I’m in desperate need of a nap today and this record is the most likely in my to-do pile to get me in a mellow mood. I recall listening to this record a fair amount in college (lol, of course I did), especially the track “Fearless;” I forgot how beautiful that song is (it also has a Zeppelin-esque guitar riff which is probably why it’s my top track). It was released as the b-side of the single “One of These Days,” a mostly-instrumental that features a rare vocal “performance” by drummer Nick Mason; he says the line “One of these days, I’m going to cut you into little pieces,” which “was aimed at Sir Jimmy Young, the then BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 DJ who the band supposedly disliked because of his tendency to babble. During early 1970s concerts, they sometimes played a sound collage of clips from Young’s radio show that was edited to sound completely nonsensical, thus figuratively ‘cutting him into little pieces.'” (wiki) I also recall listening to the bluesy “Seamus” in college but I’m not nearly as fond of that track (same with “San Tropez“). The entirety of Side B is made up of the song “Echoes” which is a bananas 23 minutes long and many consider one of Floyd’s best. I’m not sure about that but it definitely is making me sleepy.

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Jethro Tull “This Was”

sfilzen — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 18:35:19 +0000

Jethro Tull “This Was” 1968. The debut record from blues rock, jazz-flute enthusiast prog-rockers. I’m a casual Tull fan (to the chagrin of some in our household) but I’m more familiar with their more popular 70’s releases (Aqualung and Songs from the Wood are two favorites). This was (pun totally intended) my first listen to their well-received debut (it hit #10 in the UK and went to #62 in the US) and it’s….background music. Not enough rock, way too much jazz for my tastes, though there is some pretty classic blues (filtered through the lens of British white guys) like the track “It’s Breaking Me Up” and I do like the vaguely exotic instrumental “Dharma for One” – a great beat and a super- impressive drum solo (from Wiki “This song featured the “claghorn,” a hybrid instrument invented by Tull’s Jeffrey Hammond which combined the body of a recorder, the bell of a toy trumpet and the mouthpiece of a saxophone. Anderson also claims to have invented the instrument.” Tull’s rendition of the traditional blues instrumental “Cat’s Squirrel” highlights impressive guitar musicianship and is pretty good, too. The sole single release, “A Song for Jeffrey” did not chart in the UK; it was the b-side to the US single release of “Love Story.” A fun nugget: “The song was performed on the Rolling Stones Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus in December 1968…This was the only Tull performance with guitarist Tony Iommi during his two-week tenure with the band.” (I did not know Iommi was in Tull!) It is pretty good – like Zeppelin…with jazz flute.

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Grateful Dead “Terrapin Station”

sfilzen — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 17:52:41 +0000

Grateful Dead “Terrapin Station” released 45 years ago today, July 27th, 1977. It was their ninth studio LP and hit # 28 on the US album charts. Terrapin Station is an uneven record, mostly due to its production, which the band pretty much hated: it was the disco era so there were a lot of flourishes added post-recording like orchestral strings, horns and choir overdubs. Drummer Bill Kreutzmann says of the title track: “The recorded version of “Terrapin Station” is probably my least favorite version because of that. It sounds really grandiose, like somebody’s ego is playing those strings.” Despite that, I really love a lot of the record; it brings me back to the late 80’s/early 90’s when I went through my Deadhead phase and went to several shows between ’89 and ’92. I found the setlists for the concerts I attended and confirmed that they played a couple of my top Terrapin tracks during a couple of them*: “Samson and Delilah” at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario in March of ’90; “Terrapin Station” at both the World Music Theater in Tinley Park, IL in June ’90 (Brent Mydland’s last ever show before he died) and at Soldier Field in June ’91. I could have sworn I saw a concert where they played “Estimated Prophet” (I always loved when they did “Estimated-Shakedown“), same with “Passenger” but I guess I just listened to a lot of bootleg tapes that had those jams. The not good: their cover of “Dancin’ in the Streets” is too wa-wa disco and “Sunrise,” written and sung by Donna Godchaux, is really awful.

Another likely reason for the unevenness of the record is the tension between the band and the producer during the recording process. Their new record label (Arista) really wanted a commercial album (not something the Dead have ever been particularly good at) so they brought in Keith Olsen who had success working with Fleetwood Mac. From Wiki: “Olsen had a method for reining in the Dead: ‘During the cutting of the basic tracks it was pretty hard to get every member of the band in the studio at the same time … so [Steve] Parish went out to the hardware store and got these giant nails and a great big hammer and as soon as everybody was in, he hammered the door shut from the inside … we didn’t have drifters from the other studios coming in to listen. We didn’t have people leaving to go screw around elsewhere. We started getting work done.'” “Bill Kreutzmann said ‘He’d [Olsen] have us play the same thing over and over again, and we’re not really the type of band that can put up with that. Our very identity is based on the opposite principle.'”

*I also was at Alpine Valley on July 18th, 1989 and Soldier Field in ’92.

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“WAPL Apple Cellar Tapes”

sfilzen — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 17:10:21 +0000

“WAPL Apple Cellar Tapes” 1982. Pacer Productions. Various artists compilation. “Six of the most exciting bands in the WAPL listening area as voted by the audiences and the ‘Apple’ staff during three nights of the ‘Rock Battle of the Bands.'” WAPL is an AOR/classic rock station in Appleton, Wisconsin that I listened to growing up and tune into when we head up there for visits to our families. Their playlist hasn’t changed much since 1986, which honestly makes my heart glow a little bit. We’re guaranteed to hear Rush, Van Halen, Pink Floyd or RATT at least once. So when Joe brought this home from the Exclusive Company (a regional chain record store that started up in the Fox Valley and will be shutting down all of its locations soon), I grabbed it and headed into the depths of the internet to figure out what it was. Apple Cellar Tapes is proggy and 80’s hard rock by a few different Northeast Wisconsin bands: Yazz, Adam Trask, Stormbringer, Magician, High Flyer and Fracture – this album is the only recorded appearance for each band. Not surprisingly, there isn’t much info about it other than the release date (’82) and a brief review of each track by some metalhead on his blog. It’s mostly cock rock: lots of overblown guitar solos, peacock posturing keyboard riffs and big, crashing 80’s drumming. I do kind of like Yazz’s “All Night Long” which has some serious funk; their other song “Go” is decent as well. “Fight” by Stormbringer has a rockin’ beat and plenty of rough swagger and “Can’t Do Without You” by Magician is pretty much a direct ripoff of Ozzy. “Emily” by Adam Trask is a truly painful power ballad and their other song “Cat Lady” isn’t much better. “Changing of the Guardian” by Fracture is “proggy pomp rock” (as quoted by metalhead’s blog). This is not my kind of music but I am rather delighting in the sounds of my hometown from 40 years ago. Cruisin’ the ave (College Avenue in downtown Appleton) was a favorite pastime of teens in the 80’s and I can picture any of the tracks blaring out of Firebird Trans Ams and Mustangs on a summer Saturday night.

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Jethro Tull “Aqualung”

sfilzen — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 16:39:11 +0000

Jethro Tull “Aqualung” released 50 years ago today, March 19th, 1971. The band’s fourth album went to #4 in the UK and to #7 in the US; it was their most successful and iconic album ever and made the best-of-all-time lists in many publications including Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Guitarist, and Prog. The sometimes hard-rocking, sometimes twee flute folky prog rock album had two official singles: “Hymn 43″ (#91 US) and “Locomotive Breath” (which did not chart in ‘71 but went to #59 in the US when it was re-released in ‘76). Weirdly the title track, “Aqualung” was not a single (most likely due to its 6-minute-plus length) even though it’s one of their best-known songs (well, maybe that’s just me – I heard it…continue to hear it, actually, frequently on AOR radio stations). Besides those tracks, I also really like the acoustic ‘Elizabethan madrigal’ song “Mother Goose.”

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Queen “Queen”

sfilzen — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 18:16:36 +0000

Queen “Queen” 1973. I’m spinning Queen’s debut LP today in honor of what would have been Freddie Mercury’s 73rd birthday (b. Farrokh Bulsara, September 5th, 1946, d. 1991). The album peaked at #47 in the UK (and then a bit higher at #24 in ‘75) and #47 in the US. Queen’s first single was the opening track “Keep Yourself Alive,” released just before the album and at the time failed to chart in both the UK and the US, their only single that didn’t chart in the UK. Retrospectively, it is now considered to be one of the greatest guitar songs of all-time (Rolling Stone) and is given a memorable scene in the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody as Mercury’s first onstage performance. The other single from Queen that the band released was “Liar,” though only in the US. Other notable tracks are “Doing All Right” (mainly because I like it! but also because it’s one of the few Queen songs that Brian May plays piano – Mercury took over most of the piano recordings and performances after Queen’s recording), “My Fairy King” (the line “Mother Mercury, look what they’ve done to me” is the inspiration for Freddie’s stage moniker) and the instrumental “Seven Seas of Rhye” (a teaser track: the final version appeared on Queen II and became Queen’s first hit single, going to #10 in the UK).

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Bevis and Twink “Magic Eye”

sfilzen — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 16:18:49 +0000

Bevis and Twink “Magic Eye” 1990. Woronzow Records. A prog-psych-garage collaboration by Twink (drummer for Pretty Things, Pink Fairies, Stars – with Syd Barrett – in the 60′ and 70′s and solo work since) and the Bevis Frond aka Nick Saloman (prolific songwriter and guitarist, head of Woronzow Records, active from the 80′s til present day). Magic Eye is a combo of trippy, spacey soundspaces (ie the brief instrumental “Eclipse” or the much longer jam “Gryke”) and hard rock, like my favorite track “Flying Igloos” as well as “Black Queen” (60′s garage meets Black Sabbath) and “Fractured Sky” where Twink lays down thundering beats over which Saloman wails and growls out weird-ass lyrics (“we’re sucking on our mutant fruit”) and throws in nuggets of heavy-metal though virtuosic tinged guitar solos.

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Ars Nova “Ars Nova”

sfilzen — Wed, 01 May 2019 15:54:36 +0000

Ars Nova “Ars Nova” 1968. Psychedelic prog rock from the short-lived 60′s band (they opened for The Doors once), named for a musical style from 1300′s popular in France and Low Countries (Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg) or perhaps named for the more general musical style of polyphony (music consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of melody). Either way, super-extra music nerdy. Not surprisingly, the main guys of Are Nova met at a music conservatory and they flex their vast instrumentation muscle with a ridiculous amount of variety: trombone! guitar! organ! piano! trumpet! and layers upon layers of sound. This is my first listen to Ars Nova; I’ve never even heard of them but we have stacks upon stacks of should-it-stay-or-should-it-go? LP’s so I’m slowly wading through them. I like psychedelic rock and am OK with some prog rock but this album is way too extra. The blasting and orchestrated horns put much of the sound closer to straight-up classical music and tracks like the opener “Pavan For My Lady” are too Celtic-folk-lords-a-leapin’ for my tastes (though the guitar work is technically perfect). The song “General Clover Ends a War” isn’t too bad, some hints at actual rough 60′s rock-n-roll on this one (with a LOT of trumpet), but I kinda started tuning out the rest of Side A. Side B starts off with “Fields of People” which is a blend of 60′s flower power and English folk (and again a LOT of trumpet) – not too bad, actually. “Automatic Love” is a jaunty track, that starts off 60′s garage-psych but then promptly dissolves into a vaudevillian/Benny Hill meets the Beatles cacophony. I wholeheartedly agree with this from Allmusic, “The songs – often linked by brief interludes – are a mixed bag, though, that seem to indicate a confusion over direction, or a bit of a psychedelic throw-in-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach.” I think this one is going to go.

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