To be totally honest we at Desert Psychlist have never been fans of metal played at breakneck speeds, we much prefer our metal low, slow and lurching, it is probably why we never got off on the whole thrash thing and basically tried to convince ourselves power metal was a figment of our combined imaginations. Basically we have actively avoided anything with more BPM's than an oars masters drum, well up until today that is. Today we pressed play on NYC metallurgists Tower's new release "Let There Be Dark" and discovered that full on, no holds barred galloping metal can actually be something to be savoured, especially when its fronted by a vocalist in possession of incredible depth, clarity and power.
Sunday, 30 March 2025
TOWER ~ LET THERE BE DARK .... review
Thursday, 27 March 2025
DAEVAR ~ SUB ROSA ... review
Monday, 24 March 2025
ESPERMATICIDIO ~ KALKUTUN .... review
If you are one of those looking to dip your toes into Chile's vibrant and diverse underground scene for the very first time then you could not find a better album to start your journey with than Espermaticidio's "Kalkutun", this is an album that delivers all the crunch, all the bite and all the musicality you could possibly want from an album deemed as "underground". If, on the other hand, you are a listener already fully immersed in the musical delights Chile has to offer then this is yet another superb album of Chilean grooviness that needs to be gracing your music collection..
Check it out ...
Thursday, 20 March 2025
FUZZ EVIL ~ SMEAR MERCHANTS ....review
Opening track "Fraile Mourning of Eternity" is gentle homely and quaint so make the most of it because apart from the ambient and atmospheric "Whispers from the Abyss", that closes the album, its foot to the floor raucous heaviness all the way. The heaviness begins with second track "Wanderers Wake". the guitars of Wayne Rudell and Preston Jennings (baritone) combining with Joseph Rudell's exquisite booming bass and Kenneth "Cajun" Adam's busy and industrious drumming to create a groove dirtier and darker than anything that has graced the bands output up until now.. Vocals here are for the most part clean and melodic with W Rudell handling the majority of the lead work in his customary gritty croon with his bass playing brother Joseph helping out on backing vocals and harmonies, as we have said earlier there is blackened edginess to be found within the bands sound on this album day and much of that edginess is down to drummer Adams pitching in with vocals of a harsher, growlier nature. The heavy darker feel the band bring to that second number is more or less the vibe running through the majority of the album, songs like "Progression of the Black Sun", "How To Vibe Alone" and "Under The Starlit Grave" find the band hitting grooves that sound like they should belong in the canon of doom but if this is doom then its a doom stitched together with so many other elements that it almost becomes something else entirely, and let us just say that it is a something you'll really not want to miss out on. Even when the band do slip back to their old desert punk roots, like on "Sermons of the Defiant", and to some extent, title track "Smear Merchants", its as if they have discovered a darker more twisted version of their old selves. For us at Desert Psychlist though it is the song sitting at #3 on the albums track listing that really brings to the fore Fuzz Evil's evolution as a band, "Doomsayers Lament" may be an instrumental and may only be just over two minutes long but this is a song that takes the rule book and tears it to shreds, its like musical form and experimentation decided to sit down and write a tune together, which gets Desert Psychlist wondering if it was this schizophrenic jam that was the catalyst for the bands decision to approach their music from a whole new angle this time out.
© 2025 Frazer Jones
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
RIFFT ~ DEATH PEACE ..... review
Go to many bands albums/EP pages on Bandcamp and beneath all the various format pricings and track listings but above the line-up info and the production credits you will often find a blurb, sometimes this blurb will have been written by a member of the band, sometimes by the bands label , sometimes by a PR agent and on some occasions by a friendly journalist. This blurb usually gives you a little bit of history about the band, a few words about the recording process and if its an album with a concept a few lines explaining the theme. Go to that section of RIFFT's latest release "Death Peace" however and you are met with just one line, "Death Peace: A heavy metal album by RIFFT", eight words that say a lot but don't quite manage to cover the whole story... which is where we come in.
Calling "Death Peace" a heavy metal album is, Desert Psychlist suspects, a bit of a tongue in cheek statement and we say that because this is an album packed to its rafters with elements and essences drawn from a wide range of genres and styles, for example opening instrumental "Feed Your Fear" with its ambient droning atmospherics and weird clicks and whirls is probably about as far removed from heavy metal as it is possible to get. Things do get a little more metallic on next track "An Unforgiving Sky" but that's more due to heftiness of its guitar and bass tones and the occasional swings of its vocals into grittier realms than anything else because the songs overall feel is mostly post metallic and proggish, albeit with a plethora of doomic textures thrown in for good measure. It's back to the weirdness for the strangely unsettling "Dewdrops" where we are faced with droning dark noise, effect generated whoops and whistles and remote sounding drums framing passages of spoken word, off-kilter and slightly sinister it sets the scene nicely for the following "The Necromancer's Door" a thrusting, at times jerky, tome that for its most part features crunching heavy riffage and thunderous rhythms but on occasions wanders into prog-like territories where it is accompanied by clean somewhat lilting vocal melodies and harmonies.. Continuing their path of delivering moody experimental pieces next to more traditional heaviness RIFFT serve up "Love and Error" next, this piece mixing elements of Americana with a raft of electronic effects over what sounds like sampled narrative from a movie. "Don't Be A Stranger" follows, here we find RIFFT going up and down the gears with sections of blustering heaviness trading off with dynamics of a more tender and languid quality while title track "Death Peace" is a meandering, roaming opus that pulls together threads from right across the musical spectrum, elements of Americana, country, blues, psych, doom and even a little hardcore can be found on this sprawling epic along with one of the albums best vocal performances. RIFFT make up for the lack of an off piste slice of weirdness between the last two tracks by putting one at the end of the album, "The Insects Made Sentience in the Wolf’s Carcass", this one an ambient woodwind serenade that uses the sound of nature as its backdrop
Sunday, 16 March 2025
NIGHTSTALKER ~ RETURN FROM THE POINT OF NO RETURN ..... review
Do we really need to have to go into a long winded introduction explaining who Nightstalker are and detailing the impact this band have had not only on music from their own country Greece but also rock music worldwide. These guys have been doing their thing from way back in the early nineties and in that time have, in our opinion, never released anything that could be considered "duff" or "a turkey".Some would argue that without Nightstalker there would be no Greek underground rock scene and that's because many believe these guys laid the path all other Greek underground rock outfits have since been following. Like most bands there have been some comings and goings over the years (not that many to be fair) but the bands commitment to delivering vital, passionate rock music has never waned and you will find no lack of that same commitment running through the grooves of their latest release "Return From The Point Of No Return" (Heavy Psych Sounds Records).
Nightstalker are notoriously uncomfortable with being labelled as stoner, desert or any of the other tags placed upon them musically and this throws up a number of problems for any humble writer trying to review their output. The band do not make things any easier either by kicking off their new album with a song called "Dust" a number that has that same hard driven, fuzz drenched rolling gait we have over the years come to associate with music of a desert/stoner flavour. Whether you deem this tune desert/stoner rock or just plain old rock this well delivered lyrical lament, set against a surprisingly upbeat groove, is everything you could possibly hope to expect from this iconic Athenian combo. Up next comes "Heavy Trippin'" a song that starts life languid and lysergic then morphs into a throbbing heavy rock groove routinely interrupted by passages of liquid-like guitar texturing over which vocalist Argy explains to us that " you don't need someone to follow when you don't need someone to lead" in those slightly wearied tones that have become his trademark. Rightly or wrongly Desert Psychlist's riff-battered ears detects traits belonging to the likes of Monster Magnet, Hawkwind, Black Sabbath and even a little Truckfighters knocking around in the galloping rocker "Uncut" with Andreas Lagios' bass and Dinos Roulos' drums laying down a platform of rolling grainy groove for Tolis Motsios to decorate with crunching guitar riffs and soaring lead work, Argy holding up his end with a superbly delivered vocal. Title track "Return From The Point Of No Return" has a pulsing, throbbing dynamic that gives it a space like feel, a feel enhanced by Argy occasionally running his vocals through a filter and also the thrumming, almost fizzy, tones of the bass and guitar. Nightstalker dial down the ferocity a tad for the swooning, but still damn weighty, "Shipwrecked Powder Monkey" a song that begins with Argy lamenting the vagaries of wasted time against a backdrop of gentle arpeggiated guitar, his voice emotive and full of gravitas. The wistful mood is however soon shattered when Lagios and Roulos join the fray and the song takes on a more torch-like dynamic, the song slowly building, layer by layer, to a peak, a peak that finds Argy repeating the line "but tomorrow became yesterday" surrounded by Tolis Motsios' swirling, screaming guitar. "Shallow Grave" follows much a similar dynamic path to its predecessor only this time around taking a little longer to climb towards its inevitable peak, the end result however just as intense and powerful. Penultimate number "Falling Inside" boasts a bouncy swaying dynamic, had this been put out as a single back in the day when we still had plenty of rock radio stations this would be a possible contender for a playlist spot. Nightstalker bring proceedings to a close with "Flying Mode" a song that finds Argy running a wizened eye over life and its choices against a backdrop of groove that along its journey shifts from lysergic doominosity to strutting psych heavy funkiness, Argy urging us to "move on, just move on" totally ignorant of the fact that when the music is this good moving on is the last thing we want to do.
© 2025 Frazer Jones