progressive / post metal

black metal / doom

electronic / coldwave

heavy metal versions of eighties hits

progressive / psychedelic rock

noise rock / industrial

noise rock / sludge

stoner rock / psychedelic rock

death metal

alternative rock

alternative rock / dream pop

indie rock / alternative

death metal

death metal

death metal / black metal

ambient

alternative rock / grunge / stoner rock

heavy metal

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doom / drone / black metal

post rock / progressive rock

psychedelic rock / space rock

"Totally Improvised Space Rock!", that's the first thing I get to see when I go to their website. "I can't wait to hear that", is my immediate reaction. After all, I love psychedelic rock and I love psychedelic jams even more. To me, improvised jam sessions are a solid representation of freedom. I don't know why, but I don't mind either.
So when this album came in, I couldn't wait to check it out. Since then, it has been accompanying me during writing sessions, household tasks and games of Scrabble. Now it's time to finally get the review online, even though the album will only be released in the beginning of October.

​Øresund Space Collective is a space rock collective from Denmark, formed in 2004. Over the years, more than fifty musicians have played in the band and no less than twenty five albums have been released. The band toured all over Europe and played in Las Vegas. Their instrumentation consists of (here we go) guitars, synths, doun douns (percussion), bass, talking drums, drums, sitar, violin, farfise and "others". 

The album was recorded in November 2016 and contains three tracks. Opener 'Reflections In The Mind's Eye' is a massive psychedelic jam with hypnotic solos, Eastern influences and a highly immersive groove. For fans of Ozric Tentacles and colleagues, this is an absolute blast. In fact, this track alone is already worth the effort of buying the album and then there's even more to come. 'ESP' drives on an electronic sequence and uptempo drums. Even though the electronics are very present, this seems to most rock related tune on this album. You can either dance or bang your head to this one, the choice is yours.

The closing track, 'Oracle' is a forty minutes lasting anthem of psychedelic rock. On the vinyl version, this one is split up into two parts. For this, Øresund Space Collective seems to have take the best out of the previous two tracks and poured them into a massive musical adventure. This track, and the others, are simply irresistible pieces of psychedelic rock. Fans of the genre can easily trust Øresund Space Collective to deliver the good. This album is an awesome trip, one I recommend to any self respecting music fan out there.


​Serge

psychedelic / blues / rock

Released on August 25, Renegades is the most recent album by American blues rock group Porno Wolves, from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Almost forty seven minutes long, the album has ten tracks: In the Garden, Winter's Night, Riddles in the Dark, Bad Man, Renegades, Young Moon Rising, Swamp Stomp, Sierra Negra, The Road Goes Ever On and Gasoline. A very traditional blues rock album, certainly Renegades can be qualified as a very interesting work. With strong melodies, a relatively original approach to the genre and a peculiar sonorous style that draws an expressive and cohesive thin line between antagonistically rude, but seemingly precious rock’n’roll, and a more pop flavored, distinct and graceful rhythmic outlook – that reminded me acts as disparate as The Strokes, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Porno Wolves has a consistent, but versatile organic flow, emotional and sincere on the surface, but artistically dilapidated and profusely elemental, in the shapeless bottom of its deep vastness. 

With arranged and beautiful harmonies, that give rise to wonderfully captivating saxophone introspections, as well as splendorous and insurgent guitar solos, Porno Wolves really has made a curious, elegant and sophisticated album. With soul and meaning, their art is full of abrasive and delicate nuances, that exhibit passionate melodies, able to achieve the high standards they obviously imposed over them. With an obvious attention to technical detail, they also excel in the aspect of a clean and distinct sound, that masterfully perfected the marvelous definition of their music.    

Despite a great collection of overwhelming qualities, the album gets far from being qualified as a masterpiece. With a sound that sometimes sounds vague, with excessively similar and uniform passages, their creative capacities sometimes appears to be stagnant in a formulaic zone of musical process. 

Nevertheless, Renegades is definitely a good album, and Porno Wolves is a group that has originality. With potential, formidable writing skills, and a pungent musical style, they remember a little wild, decadent, melancholic, but brave midnight pubs and nightclub bands, that you don’t expect too much when you see them onstage, until they started to play. Then, you see things differently. 


Wagner

psychedelic / stoner rock

Más Alto que el Sol is a formidable and incredibly sensational album by Uruguayan stoner rock group Color Horror. Thirty nine minutes long, the album has nine tracks: Better Run, Burning Trees, Little Secret, No Vamos a ir, Ningún Lugar, Más Alto que el Sol, Fire & Bones, You got some nerves and Luces Negras. While maintaining the conventional sonorous dynamic of the genre, Color Horror has a more volatile and idyllic style, that concentrates in the synergy of its proverbial nature a delusive and electric propensity towards a very original and creative ordeal, that hallucinates its sonorous demand over an ambivalent and intricate reality, condensed in the prism of southern rock, but permanently juxtaposed under the realms of a profoundly psychedelic vibe. The final result couldn’t have been more brilliant: a true stoner rock sound, easily reinvigorated over the astuteness of a formidable audacity that ably reconciles the traditional aspects of the genre with original ones. 

With songs shorter than usual for the genre, Más Alto que el Sol is probably the greatest and mostly fundamental musical attestation of creativity ever testified in the genre. Although the first two tracks – namely, Better Run and Burning Trees – probably condenses better the essence and the descriptive qualities of Color Horror’s music, the entire album is the literal consecration of a profound innovation brilliantly inserted into the genre without deforming it. On the contrary, it widely accepts and expands its sonorous possibilities into an ever increasing gradual pyramid of elevated rapture.

Singing in English as well as their native Spanish, Color Horror demonstrates the genuine impulses that drives their music all the way through, throughout the album. A marvelous state of the art work, a true and vehemently whimsical masterpiece, Más Alto que el Sol deserves all compliments for its sensational, genuine and unparalleled  level of originality. With a strength that easily modifies the music to insert the listener into a whole new level of wonderful perceptions, this record is destined to become a huge reference in the genre, for the underground scene.

With a great and sensational energy that respects, but at the same time formidably aggregates a whole new set of qualities into the genre, Color Horror shows on this great album Más Alto que el Sol why they deserve to have a long and fruitful career: because they’ve created an entirely new genre from an existing one. And what a marvelous work this album has revealed itself to be!  


Wagner

grunge / alternative rock

black metal / death metal

doom / black metal

psychedelic rock

psychedelic rock

grindcore

black metal 

ambient / electronic

progressive metal

alternative rock / blues

black metal

hard rock

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black metal

krautrock / post punk

hard rock / grunge

dark ambient

classical

grindcore

stoner rock / psychedelic rock

drone / ambient

thrash metal

doom metal

black metal / folk metal

post rock / ambient

electronic / downtempo / psychill

electronic / downtempo / dub

Mindspring Music

grindcore

drone / black metal

doom / avant garde

psychedelic rock / doom

By now, there's no denying that psychedelic rock and doom metal have been making a huge comeback in the past few years. Once frowned upon by the metal scene for being soft, slow and boring, doom metal now is a widespread subgenre that includes sludge, post-metal, psychedelic rock, space rock and stoner rock.So it's no surprise that there are plenty of bands converting to the power of the riff and the glory of the fuzz. With it, the influences from the world of the occult also seem to return and blend in with the music. Personally, I think that is a good thing. There are still plenty of amazing songs being written and coated in that awesome, vintage seventies sound.

This album by Spanish trio Kabbalah contains eight of those songs, plus a perfect, creepy intro. Not only to these women come up with excellent occult psychedelic rock music, they also enhance it with great vocals. Somehow they make me imagine The Breeders taking on the music of Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. Other bands that come to mind include Coven, Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, L7 and so on.

While opener 'Resurrected' follower 'Phantasmal Planetoid' are my absolute favorites, all of these songs would fit perfectly in your psychedelic playlists. Furthermore, on 'The Darkness of Time' they prove to know a thing or two about old school blues rock. 'Dark Revelation', another firm highlight is a groovy rocker that will get young and old hard rockers off their feet, no doubt about that. 

In all, I think this is an excellent piece of occult rock, psychedelic rock or old school doom metal, whatever you would like to call it. I admit, perhaps not every song is as strong as the next one but they all have that gloomy, mysterious atmosphere which gives the whole thing a nice conceptual feel. So yeah, I can only recommend this album and I hope that I'll get the chance to see these women perform these songs live one day.


​Serge

psychedelic / experimental / jazz 

And now for something completely different. Today, we've had death metal, ambient, neo classical and metalcore, and now we're diving right into the world of genre-restrictions-ignoring music, guided by American band Crown Larks and their latest effort 'Population'.

The album contains ten songs, and none of them is a normal, easy-digestible pop song. Instead, Crown Larks throw vintage psychedelic rock, free jazz and noise rock into the blender and pour some strange, complex tunes into your ears. The end result is something perplexing, something Zappa would love.

Bands that come to mind include Zappa but also Unsane, Can, Faust, Boredoms, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Melvins, Zu, Ween, Black Dice and Primus. I would also add some free jazz bands but I don't know that many jazz combos. Then again, that is already an impressive list of bands and perhaps a confusing one too. But rest assured, everything about this album is confusing. Here are some questions that have come up.

-Are the people on the cover having sex or are they strangling each other?
-Are those electronics or analog instruments?
-How the fuck am I going to describe this to our readers?

Fact remains, even though I don't really know how to categorize this album, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. This is definitely one of the most confusing albums I've ever heard but it's also a damn good one. There is a certain playfulness throughout the entire album, which somehow provides the band with their own sound, even with the massive whirlpool of genres and influences they have mixed together. 

So if you love anything between krautrock, psychedelic rock, drone folk and jazz, you should really check out this album. It's a bit like an instrument store coming to life and creating all kinds of mesmerizing tunes at night. As far as I'm concerned, this is a highly interesting piece of work with plenty of highlights and plenty of surprises. These songs are going right into my day-to-day playlist and I suggest you do the same.


​Serge

alternative rock / psychedelic

We'll end today's writing sessions with one of the strangest rock albums I have heard in the past few years. Once, way back in 1983, Italian rockers Viridanse threw themselves in their country's new wave scene. After a few years, the band split up, only to return with a more psychedelic inspired approach in 2014. Now, three years later, they still seem to evolve as a band. Other genres have been leaking into Viridanse's sound, genres like jazz, progressive rock, post metal and krautrock. The result is something varied and immersive, but also something weird and unusual. Then again, we like weird and unusual. We are weird and unusual.

Lorenzo Stecconi produced this album, someone who is known for collaborations and productions for Zu and Ufomammut. His presence might explain the heavy and in-your-face sound of the whole album. Play it loud enough and you might be able to compare this to the stuff Melvins often blast out of their speakers. There is a lot of energy and intensity to be found and the present day post-metal scene is never far away. 

So there is noise rock, post metal and plenty of other styles to be found, which obviously is not bad for a band that once was a new wave and post punk act. In a way you can still hear those eighties influences, mainly in the vocals (which by the way are all in Italian). Yet, the gloomy eighties sound is enhanced with heavy riffs, battering drums and plenty of headbanging passages. And with all that, those are still incredibly groovy rock songs.

So who to recommend this album to? Well, that might be tough. On the other hand, I can just recommend it to each and every fans of original and immersive rock music. There are some awesome songs to be found, with 'Scomunica' being a world class tune, driving on awesome guitar work. My advice: give it a shot and allow yourself to dwell in this strange and led heavy fairy tale that Viridanse have created.


Serge

stoner / psychedelic

A band name that instantly reminds me of the founding bassist of Black Sabbath. An album title that beautifully combines the words "psychedelic" and "riff'. Seventies inspired font and artwork. All those elements combined somehow tell me that we're not dealing with an electronic dance music album. It also tells me that people who are into psychedelic space rock can just pick up this album and assume it's a good one. In fact, with this one, it's so obvious that I don't really have to listen to the music to know who to recommend this album to. But, just to make sure, I'm going to do that anyway. I mean, you never know with these American bands...

The album begins with 'Hair Of The Dog' which immediately confirms my premonition. This opener is a straightforward stoner rock song with some minor psychedelic influences. It fits the artwork perfectly, and so do the rough, grinding vocals. 'Stressknots' takes on a fuzzed out blues sounds, definitely throwing this band into the Desert/Roadburn/Fuzzfest scenes. This stuff is hot, it just my living room a lot hotter than it already is. Even typing this review makes me sweat like a pig. Hurray.

Anyway. It's not all stoner and fuzz and groove. There are some long psychedelic and cosmic jams to be found here too. The title track is the first one and it comes in perfect space rock tradition. It drives on an immersive bass line and freely jamming guitars. Obviously, this adds a lot of variation to the whole thing. In all honesty, I think this lingering beauty is my absolute favorites on this album. I wouldn't even be upset if Geezer's next album contains only this kind of stuff. I'd glorify them even more.

Or how about 'Red Hook', a minimal psychedelic ballad that in some bizarre way reminds be of R.E.M.'s 'Drive', played by Johnny Cash in the middle of a remote desert. Is that a compliment? I don't know. Maybe the heat is getting to me. The album closes with the massively groovy vintage hard rock song 'Dirty Penny', which also contains an awesome elongated jam session. Oh well. you'll guessed it by now. This is an excellent piece of modern day psych rock, one that you don't want to ignore if you're into this stuff.


​Serge