Steve Von Till's New Harvestman Album Is Here for All Your Ritual Needs

Megaliths are any old arrangement of stones that were assembled in ancient times, presumably for mystic rituals. Stonehenge is the most famous, but there are many other places in the world where big honking rocks are set up in weird ways that make crypto-scientists fidget with glee. Neurosis singer/guitarist Steve Von Till makes music with his main band that more or less sounds like one of these boulders slowly colliding with your head, but his solo work under his own name and as the drone project Harvestman provides a more placid kind of heaviness, as the new Harvestman album Music for Megaliths demonstrates.

The album is a great example of the ever-bountiful intersection between heavy metal and experimental music, feeling like the former without ever exploding into pounding riffs and drums. "This Forest Is Our Temple" (word to Ocarina of Time) fades eerily into existence atop strings and reed instruments as a melancholy acoustic guitar figure anchors the piece together with something resembling folky warmth. "Ring of Sentinels" allows some programmed electronic drums to disturb the pagan party, and is probably the least ominous thing here, nearly counting as chillout music. But wait until "White Horse" concludes the LP with bluesy, rough-hewn guitar leads and a dusted monologue from the man behind the music. Did we mention that Von Till is playing pretty much everything himself, even hurdy-gurdy? Who even plays hurdy-gurdies anymore? Stream Music for Megaliths below.

Phil is a drone duke. He's on Twitter.