HOLY GIANT ~ DIVINERS & DIVIDERS ... review

Italian trio Holy Giant describe themselves as  "fuzz worshippers" and "earthquake makers" and its a description you won't find Desert Psychlist arguing with anytime soon. Holy Giant, Marco di Pietro (bass, vocals); Massimiliano Rubini (drums)  and Francesco Sorana (guitars), make the sort of music the humble fuzz pedal was made to decorate, a mixture of hard driven riff heavy stoner doom and off centred heavy psych that is constantly switching back and forth between heavy and heady and boasts strong gritty vocals that occasionally feature elements of East Asian throat singing. The Bologna based trio have just released their first full length album "Diviners & Dividers", seven songs that fizz with fuzz and are seismic in impact.

First track "Cosmic Pilgrim" introduces itself with palm muted guitar and subtle drumming accompanied by low guttural throat singing, after a brief explosion of heaviness the vocals shift to clean and gritty and tell, with the help of a well chosen snippet of sampled narrative, of a cosmic being adrift in Jupiter's infamous Great Red Spot. The songs groove is mostly proto-doomic in flavour but does regularly dip its toes into more lysergic waters and in doing so gives the song an edginess it might have lacked if it had been a straight down the line doomic rocker. Next up is "Green Foo", more straightforward and rockier than its predecessor it nonetheless boasts some unexpected twist and turns along the way.  If the stop start dynamics, swirling guitar motifs and thundering rhythms that inhabit the first section of  next song "Asteroid Blues" are not enough to have you drooling then its heavily trippy final section most definitely will, this is a song that even carries its own review in its lyrics "guitar riffs are sick, huge wall of sound, bass lines are so thick they are shaking the ground, green goddess of smoke is our muse, you’ll be blown away by this Asteroid Blues", nuff said! The following "Three Witches" is a doomic delight with a low slow and heavy dynamic that also sees the band throwing a few folkish textures into the mix, especially in the tone and meter of some of its vocals. Title track "Diviners & Dividers" finds Holy Giant flying their psychedelic doom flag high for all to see while imparting to us a tale of conflict between men and gods, a seriously good song! Liquid bass lines and shimmering percussion announce the arrival of "Reincarnation of a Fallen Titan" and then crunchy guitar joins the fray and its upward and onward from there on in, bass riffs and searing guitar solos vying for attention with a grizzled vocal informing us of a journey across a distant land, a doomic travelogue so good you'll be scouring the web to book a ticket. If you are still wondering whether to throw some coins  at Holy Giant's debut then final track "Liberation" is the song that should convince you to invest, a huge sprawling tome that alternates between moments of serene psychedelic beauty and moments of crunching dank doominess, a song that lifts you to the heavens one minute only to slam you down to the pits of hell the next, the perfect end to what is a near perfect album.

Holy Giant's "Diviners & Dividers" is a totally different sounding album from many of those currently coming out of Italy, courtesy of acid doomers like Witchsnake and Demonio, despite the fact the album shares many of those same elements, The reason for this is in its dynamics, the songs populating "Diviners & Dividers" have an upward and downward trajectory, an ebb and flow that takes them from being just a fuzz drenched assault on the senses to being something just as speaker blowing but delivered with a touch more subtlety and delicacy. 

Check it out ...

© 2023 Frazer Jones