CURSE THE SON ~ DELIRIUM .... review

Hamden, Connecticut outfit Curse the Son have been knocking around for what seems like forever which is no mean feat given they exist in a scene not renowned for the longevity of its bands. In their time together Curse the Son have a accrued a healthy reputation for delivering quality material, from the bands first EP to the album we are going to be reviewing today Curse the Son have hardly put a foot wrong. It does then seem strange that despite the respect and admiration they have garnered over the years that the band have not quite made that leap to the top of pile where bands like Clutch, Elder and Monster Magnet currently reside. That could all change with "Delirium" (Ripple Music) an album that sees Curse the Son not so much shrugging off the proto-doom that has served them so well but hugging it tighter than they have ever done before while at the same time also bringing to the table a host of new textures and colours, creating in the process an American doom classic worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as those iconic albums by the likes of Saint Vitus, The Obsessed and Pentagram

 Opening number "The Suffering Is Ours" draws not from the well of Sabbath, as so many songs in this scene do, but draws instead from the sound that was created by those American bands inspired by Sabbath. The songs dynamic is of course doomic and heavy but leaves at the door any pretence at being bluesy or having that jazzy swing thing going on, if their is any swing to be found here it is not to be found in the songs bass lines or drumming, all of which are laid down heavy and thunderous, it is to be found in its vocals which posses a lilting melodic quality. Up next we get "Deliberate Cruelty (The Extermination Song)" and here we DO get that "swing" thing going on in the drums, bass and guitar but also little vestiges of "out there in the cosmos" experimentation. Next we come to the track that most, if not all, will be coming back to again and again, "RIP" is classic proto-doom, a Witchfinder General cover with verses, a chorus and a bridge that will stay with you until you shuffle off this mortal coil, there will be those who say that you can never improve on an original song...well they cannot have heard this then. "Riff Forest", an instrumental, is exactly what it says it is.. a dense onslaught of dark and doomy riffage driven by pummelling percussion  that is then followed by "In Dismal Space" a sometimes full on sometimes spacious assault on the senses that mixes psychedelic doom with gnarled stoner metal to create a groove that is in turns brutal and in turns atmospheric, it's also in possession of a great vocal. There is an element of "tune in turn on and drop out" about the hazy lysergic and trippy "Brain Paint" while title track "Delirium" is probably Curse the Son at their creative best, slightly off the wall and quirky yet still in full possession of the doomic heaviness that has become their calling card. Second to last we get "May Cause Drowsiness" a ridiculously brief mood piece that feels like it is over before it even gets started. Final number "Liste Of The Dead" sees Curse the Son put all the spaciousness and trippiness of the albums later stages behind them and go full on doom with low slow reverberating riffage, thundering percussion and clean powerful vocals to the fore, the songs only downside being that it is allowed to fade out rather than come to a satisfying full stop.

Do not go dismissing Curse the Son as another of those Sabbath worshipping bands as they are far from being that, yes they do work in a similar field of music but their sound, when not spiralling off into hazy and lysergic territories, is much more an American take on doom, a sound inspired more by Wino than it is Iommi. Having said that there are many places on "Delirium" where the doom takes a slight  back seat for a much more experimental and expansive dynamics and it is in those places that Curse the Son really push the envelope of what can be done within the confines of the doom genre.

Check it out.... 

© 2024 Frazer Jones

HELL IS A CITY ~ NARROW SEAS .... review

Desert Psychlist has to admit to not being familiar with California trio Hell Is A City's work up until now, which is not surprising considering that up until recently the band have only been releasing one off tracks on their Bandcamp, but we are on board with them now. The reason they have suddenly appeared on our radar is due to the release of the bands first full length album "Narrow Seas" an intriguing blend of heavy blues and proto-doom perfect for those who like their music sitting on a razor's edge between the heavy rock sound of the 1970's and the stonerized doom and heavy psych of today's underground scene. 

Back in 1973 a trio named Stray Dog released one of the most underrated self-titled debut's in rock history, the album opened with "Tramp (How It Is)" a song that began with swelling keyboards, choral singing, cannons and scorching lead guitar only to be then suddenly interrupted by a cry of "fasten your seatbelts" before erupting into one of the best opening rock songs ever to grace a debut album. The reason we mention this is that the feeling Desert Psychlist got when that track exploded into our lives back in the day is akin to the feeling we got today when "Collapse", the opening track of "Narrow Seas", rolled out of our speakers and proceeded to blow us away with its soulful and husky vocals punchy proto doom grooves and swirling guitar textures, a truly "fasten your seatbelts" moment. Now we all own albums that have started strong only to then go quickly downhill but that is not the case here as "Hush" quickly proves with its excellent boogie meets doom groove, its angry with the world lyrical content and its cleverly placed spoken narrative, and lets not forget those face-melting guitar solos. "Narrow Seas/Brewedinterlude" follows with the first part of the song finding Hell Is A City mining for doomic gold while still maintaining a firm grip on the blues, albeit blues tinted with a little Alice In Chains guitar slurriness, the second part of the song a serene and tranquil mood piece. "Dry Your Eyes" finds the band jettisoning the doom for a dynamic with a slightly more grungy desert rock feel while "Skinpiston" sees the band using that old doom trick of switching tempos and time signatures to create a groove that is Sabbathian in flavour if not wholly in sound. Penultimate track "Ask The River" sees Hell Is A City going full delta blues with shimmering slide guitar resonating over low grizzled bass and punchy solid tight drumming, it has to be said that if it were not for the huskier throatier nature of the vocal tones and the sampled narrative that marks the songs final moments then comparisons could easily be made here with Led Zeppelin's/Memphis Minnie's "When The Levee Breaks". Hell Is A City finish their debut with the appropriately titled "The End" a delicious mish mash of alt-metal, heavy blues and proto-doom that is raucous and rocking for the most part but then shifts down into droning ambience as it reaches its conclusion.

Although the blues still plays a significant role in heavy music it is not the force it once was, these days the blues tends to be just another shade on the musical palette, used when needed ignored when not, very rarely do you see new bands for whom the blues is the primary rather than the secondary colour. For Hell Is A City, Karl (vocals/guitar); Gene (bass) and Josh (drums), however the blues are the block on which all their songs are built, every song on "Narrow Seas" has its roots in the genre, this is not a doom album with elements of the blues, this is a blues album with elements of doom.

Check it out .... 

© 2024 Frazer Jones

ERRONAUT ~ THE SPACE INBETWEEN ..... review

We at Desert Psychlist will admit to feeling a sense of pride when a band from our home country starts to garner praise and plaudits from an international audience and that pride has never been more felt than when promos of UK stoner/grungers Erronaut's debut album "The Space Inbetween" (London Doom Collective) started circulating among the underground scenes movers and shakers and was met with the sort of positive reactions usually reserved for more established bands. The band, Mikey Ward (vocals/guitar); Pete Hunt (guitar); Simon Wilson (bass) and Sam Gates (drums), hail from the UK's home county of Hertfordshire and cite all the usual 70's big guns as being influences on their sound but also readily acknowledge bands from Seattle's alt-metal and Palm Desert's stoner/desert scenes as being an inspiration. Admittedly there are a ton of bands out there employing a similar blending of musical styles but there is something about the way Erronaut put those styles together that makes them a little bit different and maybe just a little bit special. 

As its title suggests space, in all its meanings, is the theme at the heart of the ten compositions that make up "The Space Inbetween" and it is a theme that that permeates not just the albums lyrical content but also the albums overall sound and musical feel, even the extremely brief opening number "5.68º N 98.54º E", with its radio transmitted narration crackling out over droning noise, possesses an air of vastness and spaciousness. Things get properly underway with the "Way Down Below", the song kicks off with drummer Gates beating out a tribalistic tattoo which is then joined by guitarists Ward and Hunt and bassist Wilson in a groove that has all the hallmarks of doom but due to its airy production values, and the musicians reluctance to go overboard with crunch and distortion, feels slightly less cloying and claustrophobic, a factor helped out by Ward's melodic and slightly wearied clean vocals. Space often equates to cosmic and there is an undeniably cosmic feel to next track "Lost Cause" the songs heavily phased guitar tones and slightly echoed lead and harmonised vocals adding a certain gravitas to the songs lyrical tale of confusion and disillusionment. "Per Contra" follows, its grungy desert rock groove supporting a swinging if somewhat gritty vocal melody enhanced by guitar textures that in places border on post-metallic. We get a brief moment of instrumental respite with the spacious and hazy "Echoes Inside" before its all aboard the grungy doom train again for the low slow. slightly angst ridden, and atmospheric "1202". Phased out guitar riffage returns for the circular feeling "Underneath the Sun" a song with a Dopelord meets Bush feel (well to our ears anyway) then its on to "Dark Horizon" a song that sees Erronaut mixing their grunge with their stoner and sprinkling a generous helping of spacious doom over its top. Erronaut finish off their debut with two connected songs "Beyond Sleep I: The Insomnia" and "Beyond Sleep II: The Subconscious Decompression" the former a doom/grunge hybrid sporting lilting sometimes gritty melodic vocals sung over a backdrop of post-metallic guitar textures, the latter a Floydian flavoured instrumental boasting Gilmour-esque lead work. 

Erronaut have with "The Space Inbetween" blurred the lines between what is considered underground and what is everything else, it is an album of music that speaks its own musical language and it is one we should all make a point of listening to. 

Check it out ... 

  © 2024 Frazer Jones

ANCIIENTS ~ BEYOND THE REACH OF THE SUN .... review

Vancouver's Anciients have been doing their thing since 2009 and in that time have released one EP,"Snakebeard" (2011), and two well received full length albums "Heart Of Oak" (2013) and "Voice of the Void" (2016). Recording wise Anciients may not be the most prolific of bands but what their catalogue lacks in output it has sure made up for in quality, To say the band have always had one foot in the camp of prog and one foot in the camp of metal would be correct but also a simplification of what Anciients bring to the table with their music, there is an abundance of heaviness and complexity to be found in Anciients' musical attack but it is a heaviness and complexity tempered with moments of melodic languidity and lilting serenity. The bands current line up of Kenny Cook (guitar/vocals); Brock MacInnes (guitar); Rory O'Brien (bass) and Mike Hannay (drums) have just released the bands third full length album "Beyond the Reach of the Sun" on the Season of Mist label, an album Desert Psychlist predicts will be gracing many end of year "best of" lists. 

It is inevitable that there will be those comparing what Anciients do musically with the likes of Opeth, DVNE, Huntsmen and Mastodon, simply due to the progressive metal leanings of Anciients musical attack, however in our opinion Anciients are their own animal with their own unique sound and identity. If you take "Forbidden Sanctuary", the opening track of "Beyond the Reach of the Sun", you will soon notice that although the songs guitar tones possess a sludgy complex heaviness there is also a ringing quality to those tones that is almost post-rock in texture, and in places even surf-like. Even when the clear and superbly delivered clean vocals make way for low bear like harshness and the drumming becomes a thunderous display of  ferocity and power those guitar and bass tones retain their clarity and sharpness and never once fall into the trap of becoming an overpowering and brutal noise. "Despoiled" follows and boasts a superb clean vocal melody into which bouts of guttural harshness are routinely injected, the groove carrying this melody, a blend of deathly blackened metals, is taken to another level by its furious drumming and intricate yet thrumming chord progressions. We mentioned Opeth earlier and "Is It Your God" sees Anciients jamming a groove that sits somewhere between the early death metal sound of that Swedish bands output and the more neo-classical prog of the present-day Opeth module, all of this while also boasting a guitar intro that sounds suspiciously like a re-arrangement of the one that introduces Heaven & Hell's "Bible Black". Next track "Melt the Crown" begins with gentle guitar noodling then slowly builds its part up layer by layer gradually growing more blackened and progressive as it evolves yet still managing to maintain that clarity and crystal clean sharpness we spoke of earlier. And so it goes on throughout the rest of this incredible album with the songs "Cloak of the Vast and Black", "Celestial Tyrant", "Beyond Our Minds", "The Torch", "Candescence" and "In the Absence of Wisdom" each managing to out trump its predecessor in its levels of intensity, complexity and overall impact, the whole album a truly rewarding listening experience that deserves to be listened to in its entirety, start to finish, to best fully appreciate its majesty.

Anciients "Beyond the Reach of the Sun" is the sound of a band at the very top of their game, the musicianship is off the scale impressive, the vocals are a delicious mix of melodic and growly and the lyrics are poetically cryptic and thought provoking. For those of you out there who love their music crushingly complex instrumentally intricate and unbelievably powerful it really doesn't get better than this.

Check it out .... 

© 2024 Frazer Jones

MAMMOTH VOLUME ~ RAISED UP BY WITCHES .... review

When reviewing Mammoth Volume's last album "The Cursed Who Perform The Lavagod Rites" Desert Psychlist took issue with the band calling their music "weird" preferring instead to describe what the Swedish outfit brought to the party as being "courageous" and "brave". Some might ask what we meant by these terms, well what we we were referring to was Mammoth Volume's refusal to be tied down to any specific sound or genre and the way that they were unafraid to draw into their grooves musical threads from a diverse array of sources. Now you may have thought that the eclectic nature of the bands music might have been reigned in slightly for their next album but no, if anything "Raised Up By Witches" (Blues Funeral Recordings) is even more "courageous" and "braver" than its predecessor.

Things start pretty straightforward and rocking with "The Battle of Lightwedge" the songs chugging stoner-ish guitar textures and clean sometimes gritty vocals, backed by low bouncy bass and fairly restrained drumming, harks back to the bands early work but manages to do while still sounding like its pushing boundaries.. Things get a little bit more skewered with next track "Black Horse Beach" the songs angular rhythms and off centred keyboard flourishes remind this listener of jazz fusioneers Weather Report in places but then Radiohead in others. The shadow of Frank Zappa looms large over the eclectic next track "Scissor Bliss" while "Diablo III: Faces In The Water" channels elements of prog, stoner rock and doom while managing to sound totally unrelated to any of them. There is a Beatle-esque feel to the delightful "Lisa" but also an element of Pete Gabriel era Genesis too, which is an odd combination but one nonetheless very pleasing on the ear. Mammoth Volume go out on a multi-coloured limb for the psychedelic "Serpent in the Deep" to create a sound and groove not unlike something you might find gracing a compilation of rare 60's psych songs from bands who never quite got the breaks they hoped would come their way. The chugging guitar textures are back for "Cult of Eneera" but here are delivered in an off-kilter fashion and are combined with a vocal that strays into Bertolt Brecht-like theatrical territory on certain passages. The off-kilter nature of the previous track is mirrored in next track "A Tale about a Photon" a delightfully left of centre prog workout with YES- like undertones fronted by vocals that are a mix of slightly twisted harmonies and post-punkish crooning. Finally we arrive at last track "Sången om Ymer" a scintillatingly angular and constantly shifting blend of jazz fusion, folk and prog over which vocals are delivered in the bands native Swedish tongue, it may not be the big all guns blazing finale you might be expecting but that's Mammoth Volume for you, these guys are masters at delivering the unexpected.

Big debates are raging over the effects of AI on the arts but until the powers that be can invent a programme that can reproduce music as eclectic, off-centred and deliciously diverse as that which Mammoth Volume deliver with "Raised Up By Witches" then we can all lay in our beds safe in the knowledge that real music played by real musicians is still something worth celebrating.

Check it out ...   

© 2024 Frazer Jones

EYES OF THE OAK ~ NEOLITHIC FLINT DAGGER ... review

 

We all know that Sweden is one of the go to countries when seeking out top quality underground rock music so we are not going to go on about how Sweden has for years turned out one top notch band after another or that every discerning fan of doom, stoner rock and heavy psych has at the very least one album from a Swedish band in their record collection because you already know this. Instead we will just announce that Eyes Of The Oak, a Swedish outfit whose grooves are a blend of drone heavy psych doom and prog, have a new album out entitled "Neolithic Flint Dagger", and if that does not peak your interest you might as well stop reading right now!

Let us establish right from the off that although Eyes Of The Oak are Swedish and do ply their trade beneath the shadow of the mainstream they are not your archetypical Swedish underground band, there is a strange sort of icy detachment about Eye Of The Oak's sound that is hard to explain but nonetheless does exist. Take for example the appropriately titled opening number "Cold Alchemy", this is a song in possession of all the chugging guitar riffage and hard driven rhythms you could wish for from a band in this field but then you notice the icy edginess of that riffage and that those rhythms do not so much thunder as roll over you like a cold hard wind blowing across frozen wastelands, add to this the clipped goth-like dynamics of the accompanying vocals and you may just start to understand what we mean by "icy detachment". Do not however think for one moment that the above description is a criticism, far from it, in fact it is this detachment and iciness that makes this song and those that follow such a joy to listen to and then re-listen to. Songs like "Way Home", the atmospheric "The Burning of Rome", the post-metallic "In the Wind" the epic "Offering to the Gods" and the folkish title track "Neolithic Flint Dagger" posses a saga like quality that although far removed from Viking metal share a similar quality of story telling and imagery, albeit stories and images viewed from from a slightly more chilled and frosted perspective.

Eyes Of The Oak prove with "Neolithic Flint Dagger" that it is possible to find warmth in iciness and that detachment does not necessarily equate to a lack of emotion, this is a seriously good album from a seriously good band. 

Check it out ...

© 2024 Frazer Jones

SIDEWINDER ~ TALONS .... review

Those who bought New Zealand outfit Sidewinder's excellent debut release "Vines" might not recognise the Sidewinder they are hearing on the bands latest album "Talons", and its not just because original vocalist Jason Curtis has been replaced by the singularly named Jem. It would seem that Ben Sargent (guitars); Thomas Rousell (guitars); Sean Fitzpatrick (bass) and Grant Lister (drums) have been inspired by their new vocalist's powerful throaty holler to move somewhat away from the grungy dynamics that permeated their debut and head in a more bluesy hard rock/stoner/heavy psych direction with the emphasis placed strongly on the bluesy part of that equation.

"Guardians" is the first track up, it's palm muted guitar intro is accompanied by skiffle like percussion and a seductive smoky vocal, well that is until the second guitar and bass join the fray and the song suddenly erupts into a heavy assed bluesy barnburner that sees vocalist Jem utilizing the full spectrum of her incredible vocal range, a spectrum that ranges from a full on bluesy holler to a husky whisper, her voice almost, but not quite, outcompeted by the swirling guitar work that screams and soars around it. Next track "Wasted Space" rocks back and forth between a boogie and a torch song the latter part of that equation pitching lysergic flavoured lead work against heavily phased riffage over a thunderous bass and drum groove decorated with another superbly delivered vocal. Third track "Prisoner" finds Sidewinder taking a little of the grunginess they explored on their debut "Vines" and blending it with a healthy slice of hard and heavy rock. Speaking of "Vines" we get to re-visit a song that also appeared on that debut with the Zeppelin-esque "Depths - Redux", the song was somewhat of a stand-out track on the first album and is no less impressive here, Jem's vocal differing from the original only in that it adds a slightly more airy and soaring dynamic to the proceedings.. Follow up "Disarm The King" is a paint peeling heavy blues rocker that gives no quarter while "Desert Song" sees the band flexing their stoner rock/heavy psych muscles. Penultimate number "Northern Lights" finds the band adding an element of classic rock  to their edgy psychedelic bluesiness and brings us around to final track "Yggdrasil" where we find Sidewinder donning their capes and cowls for a headlong dive into doom territory with Sargent and Rousell trading off proto flavoured riffs over a weighty backdrop of grizzled bass and pounding percussion, expertly applied by Fitzpatrick and Lister, Jem's slightly mournful yet powerful vocal performance the catalyst that takes this song from just a bangin' tune to a whole other level of face-melting.

With the grungy elements of their sound dialled slightly back and the heavy blues elements ramped up to a respectable eleven Sidewinder have, with "Talons", made an album that is a true reflection of its title, a gripping tome with the ability to lift you up to unprecedented heights of enjoyment. 

Check it out ....

© 2024 Frazer Jones