dark ambient

bandcamp

A fifteen minutes EP with four tracks, Dark Hymns lives to the glory of its simple, but energetic and suggestive title. With a very dark, subtle and obscure sound, the sensitive premises of the style are afflictive to the fullest – despite being paradoxically peaceful and serene –, and seems to anticipate the imminence of a profoundly terrible doom. While the work presents to the audience a very simple and surreal sound, its nuances are dense, and the excellence of its atmosphere dissipates a graceful and somber fear over the boundaries of the melodies. There is nothing too exceptional or extraordinary about this work, but for dark ambient genre enthusiasts, the vivid, morbid intensity displayed by the artist behind the project is certainly vast, very meaningful, and spiritually consistent. 

electronic / darksynth / dark electro / synthwave

Crossing Lights is an album released on June 22, by German electronica/ synthwave act Collapse Project. A wonderfully splendid album, with eleven tracks – Where everything began, Crossing Lights, Arise from the darkness, M.e.n.s.c.h., Pursuit,
Bloody Dancefloor, Cemetery Walk, Starfighter, Nightshift, Test Drive and Rewind – this marvelous and majestic state of the art work has colorful harmonies, a vibrant, lucid and energetic pace, an intense and cohesive style and a superb sense of rhythmic rapture. With softly pungent, dense and dynamic mordacious melodies that engraves its formidable intrinsic strength at the voracious pace of the music, the album is fulfilled with a tremendously aggrandizing and creative originality, displaying a talent that has everything to stand out as uniquely authentic in the contemporary underground scene. Showcasing a sensational musical grandeur whose artistry is effectively sidelined with the most vivid and hallucinating melodies, the genuine musical abilities of Collapse Project is a gigantic cosmic evolutionary step in what concerns the general development of the genre. With some of the most beautiful songs that I’ve ever heard, Crossing Lights is an unprecedented milestone in the history of electronica. Certainly, deserves not only to be fully appreciated, but highly highlighted as one of the most beautiful, sensational and singular albums ever conceived. 

death metal 

Coffin Birth is an album released on July 20, by Californian death metal group Extremity. With eight songs – Coffin Birth / A Million Witches, Where Evil Dwells, Grave Mistake, Umbilicus, For Want Of A Nail, Occision, Like Father Like Son and Misbegotten / Coffin Death – the record is a satisfactory, lucid and efficient, but hallucinatory and hazardous death metal album, that works decently the most traditional elements of the genre. With heavy, fast rhythms that exposes the voracity of their style, Extremity showcases a peculiar, brutal, direct style, atrocious to the core of its corrosive nature. Despite the fact that the album at some rare passages becomes a little predictable and monotonous, this does not affect the general layout of the sound, nor does any damage to the competent and precise style of the band. Their aggressive strength is somewhat inherent to the most brutal and extreme ramification of the genre, and the name of the band certainly stands for it. While you can’t expect too much of innovative features on this record, Coffin Birth displays a decent amount of virtuosity, talent and definition, and certainly honors the genre with a virulent and passionate degree of astounding sonorous hostility, that will entertain avidly the most dedicated enthusiasts of extreme death metal.    

grunge / stoner rock/ power metal / black metal / alternative rock

Released on June 22, Desolation is an album by alternative post grunge/ power metal rock group Khemmis. With six tracks – Bloodletting, Isolation, Flesh To Nothing, The Seer, Maw Of Time and From Ruin – this gracefully peculiar, audacious and cohesive record showcases the splendid abilities of a band that does an amazingly superb and exceedingly sophisticated work in their amalgamation of several different genres and styles of music. With a power metal core heavily infused by a post grunge alternative rock density, the music of Khemmis has its own singular and energetic creative groundwork, fuelled by an outstandingly voracious and rude nitroglycerine spontaneous synergy, that explodes directly in the brain of the listener. A little reminiscent of more classic and mainstream acts like Manowar, Creed and Blind Guardian – although exposing a formidable degree of uniqueness – the band does a surprisingly splendorous and excellent work on Desolation, that reveals itself as a marvelous, profoundly genuine and sensational album, all the way through. Undoubtedly, Desolation deserves to be classified as one of the greatest masterpieces of the year.  

electronic

A beautiful, outstanding, lancinating and colorful EP, Gated Soul has four tracks: Blues For Jekyll, Last Raver, Hocus Pocus and To The Woods. With beautiful melodies, and very sensible, delightfully plausible harmonies, there is a genius spontaneity coming out from these songs that actually make you feel quite enthusiastic about it. With an exceedingly serene, but at the same time ostensibly sensational and mandatory vibe, the artist reveals a subtle, but formidable sense of originality on the framework of the sound that is the embodiment of this work. From within, the melodies gradually expand from a synergy that relocates the rhythm directly to the point of its graciously moving syncope. Exposing lucidity and showcasing an extraordinary degree of creativity, this electronic music artist from Great Britain has no fear in demonstrating his superb, masterful and singular talent, that easily reinvigorates in a more sophisticated sonorous artistry the greatest elements of electronica. Here you have four amazingly wonderful songs, that you will be pleased to hear over and over again. 

black metal / death metal

A very impressive, hostile and energetic album – although widely using exceedingly crude and conventional elements by some standards – Krwawy Sztorm, by Polish extreme metal group Moloch Letalis, is an aggressive, furious and bloodthirsty album. Only thirty minutes long, the record has nine tracks: Wielka Egzekucja, Sztorm, Krwawa Ziemia, Zatańczysz Ze Mną Kurwa W Piekle ?, Przysięga, Zdychaj Psie, Palownik, Gotowy Na Piekło and Żar. With ostensive and abrupt rhythmic grievances, the style of the group is simple and direct, a little reminiscent of punk rock, given the atrocious voracity, objectivity and rudeness of its style. With a solid fidelity to the most brutal aspects of the genre, the work is amazingly competent and full of acid rage. Although there is nothing too aggrandizing nor original about the work, certainly this album is a pearl for avid enthusiasts of the genre, since Moloch Letalis literally practices closely the most ardent, extreme, raw and violent aspects of death and black metal, executing a refined breed of these marvelous genres. If you like astoundingly heavy material, Krwawy Sztorm is something you would like to hear. 

electronic / techno / industrial 

With six tracks – Entrance of Gargoyles, Dance or Die, The Order, Mechanical Vampire, The Cavern of Noise and Theunderdogme 2018hardrem1x – The Cavern of Noise, by techno industrial French artist McClane is a formidable, very intuitive and lancinating work. With abrasive and disruptive rhythms, increasingly grotesque and infuriating harmonies, cohesive dilapidation of sound and very unpredictable, dense musical compasses, The Cavern of Noise is an interesting work of art, astoundingly engraved at forefront of the best tradition of techno music. With elements that plays on the fundamental axis of the noise and industrial genres, the artist evokes at the colorful blast of the music an atmospheric vitality that rejuvenates the harmonies and the anatomy of the music. With a lucid, compulsory and graceful creativity that is exponential to the ardent mordacity of the melodies, on this album, you certainly get the best the genre will ever offer you. The title track – The Cavern of Noise – is absolutely the best, and will leave you with the dense exposition of what electro techno music should really sound like. 

black metal

Mysteries of Earth, released by British black metal group Blutvial on July 5th, is a formidable, lucid and splendorous album. Fully energized, mortally intense and with sordidly aggressive, rapturous and impulsive, but lugubrious and poetic guitar lines, Mysteries of Earth is better described as a marvelous state of the art work. With ten amazingly placid and cohesive tracks – beneath the moon, black silence, existential rite, vault of unrest, carving nihil, midwinter's halls, urnacht, doomed to eternal night, in praise of noctula and where graves spring open – this fantastic work, besides its subtle originality, extraordinary grandiosity and proverbial musical audacity, consolidates firmly and brings about intrinsically the best qualities of the genre: hostile mordacity, somber harmonies, an aggressive stylish impetus, creative melodies, a rapid pace and an exceedingly volatile density. With the organic virtue of a profoundly vital and conscious musical dynamic, you can certainly highlight this record as one of the best black metal pieces released this year. Mysteries of Earth is a punctuating device and a majestic work of art in the history of the genre.     

black metal

Cosmic Autumn is the debut album of an eponymous black metal project from Germany. Released on July 13, the record has five tracks: The Last Deception, Event Horizon, Indistinct Visions, Realms Of Eternal Light and Solitude (Instrumental). With a beautiful and very original musical layer, very sober and proficient, the sound is definitely strong, sensitive, dynamic and fundamentally cohesive. Although the record retains the fury typical of the genre, Cosmic Autumn is also a lesson on sincere and poetic artistry, as the music revolves itself around a shroud of mortifying serenity, like a twilight that dies in the agony of an everlasting moment of unspeakable affliction. Since the music translates into sound these imponderable passages of pervasive anger, the overall loyalty of the project’s style to the genre is emphasized, but without compromising the ability of the artist in showcasing his own peculiarities. A very good work, that certainly exposes the mordacious talent of an exponentially promising black metal artist, Cosmic Autumn is the opening gate for a musician that has everything to aggregate into the genre a whole new conjuncture of possibilities, with his audacious and ostensibly brilliant creativity. 

stoner rock/ psychedelic rock 

bandcamp

Earthborn is an album released by Greek stoner rock group Stone Age Mammoth. Forty minutes long, the record has seven tracks: Fearless, The Dark, Whispers, The Mysterious Life Of Mr Krips, The Secret, Earthborn and My Darkest Hour. An exceedingly calm, methodic and meticulous, but exceedingly vigorous and lucid album, undoubtedly, Earthborn is a fantastic state of the art work, that dissects, reverberates, comprehends and exposes the best aspects the genre has to offer. With singular, serene and soft guitar lines, a configuration of sonorous walls that grows from the sincere stylish leniency of the group and a marvelous sense of timing that knows from instinct what has to be done, Stone Age Mammoth has a formidable artistic security and a powerful domain over the genre, that comes out naturally. Revealing itself as a graceful masterpiece as the album evolves and revolves around its own atmosphere of calmness, omniscience and existential perception, the glorious creativity of the group certainly highlights them among other bands of the genre. With a singular conjuncture of sonorous qualities, Earthborn deserves to be greatly regarded, widely appreciated and publicized as the wonderful and fantastic work of art that truly is.

black metal

Nostalgia is an EP released on July 23 by German black metal artist ColdWorld. With five tracks – Cosmos Devourer, Demon Speed, The Dark Ages, Let The Devil In and Silva Nigra – the EP, almost twenty six minutes long, is concise. Exceedingly beautiful, with the typical elegance that is an engraved milestone of the artist, the proverbial guitar lines and the poetic harmonies anticipates the general conflagration of its overall majestic serenity, deeply fulgurated with the sensible character of its everlasting, elegant and somber  horizon of artistry. With rapid passages that are profoundly surrounded by graciously atmospheric interludes, the music on Nostalgia is overloaded with the imperial fragrances of its own rudimentary darkness, that is sustained by a lucid and dense, but marvelously whimsical ferocious resentment, whose vitality extrapolates the shadows of its own arrogant beauty. With everlasting precipices of color surrounding the rhythmic fortunes of the songs, I must confess that I wasn’t particularly overwhelmed by this work. Nevertheless, Nostalgia has all the elements that are characteristic of a ColdWorld work, and, to a certain extent, has enough qualities to be deemed valuable for its sincere and splendid level of singularity.    

post rock / experimental

Return is a three tracks EP released on July 25, by a musician from India, who works under the nom de plume of Phet. With three marvelous songs – Return, Distance and Liberation – Phet works very distinctively the interior perception of the harmonies, to articulate an ascendant, protuberant and expansive, but at the same time discreet, lucid and introspective degree of sonorous exhilaration. With a pungent, incisive axis of conscious melodic devices, correctly assimilated by the lenient, but purposeful stability of its glorious symbiosis of organic dissonances, that seems lethargic at first, the intrinsic nature of the rhythmic serenity that grows within this musical horizon slowly works towards the digressive elements of the harmonies, revolving around a certain complexity that obliterates the cosmic volatility of its formidably eloquent style. With a futurist, colorful, modernist musical approach that made the external shape of the songs, indeed, to sound in an exceedingly beautiful and elegant fashion, Return can be positively described as a very gracious, audacious and original work of art. The last track, Liberation, I would certainly highlight as my favorite. If you want to listen to something very surprising, astute and genuine, I definitely recommend this marvelous and surreal EP. 

Wagner

psychedelic rock / stoner rock

Earlier today I once again got involved into a useless discussion about which era produced the best music. Quite often, those discussions are caused by a poll. The choices usually are 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's, nothing earlier, nothing later. In this age of mass produced heavy bassline music, people tend to forget that there are still massively talented people out there, creating absolute magic. People are still crawling into rehearsal rooms and coming out with breathtaking music, showcasing the chemistry which has been going on in there. This fascinating behaviour by musicians far and wide is what keeps the musical underground going strong.

Californian desert rockers Yawning Man certainly belong in that category. Since 1986 these guys have been jamming on stages all over the world. In that time they recorded six album, with 'The Revolt Against Tired Noises' being the latest. Mostly instrumental, this album is a superb statement of the band's know-how. Besides, with the song 'Catamaran', the band has re-recorded an old classic of theirs, made famous by Kyuss when they covered it on 'The Circus Leaves Town'. Now this song finally sees a release by the band who actually wrote it, which I think is a damn good thing.

But first things first as the record opens with 'The Black Kite', a soothing and immersive tune that freely floats between psychedelic rock and post rock. Some artists in the stoner and psychedelic scenes don't like to read the term "post-rock" but if your music would fit perfectly well on a festival like Dunk!, that tag is not an insult, on the very contrary. That would place Yawning Man in the same streets as bands like Monkey3, My Sleeping Karma, Colour Haze and so on. The same goes for the title track and for 'Skyline Pressure'.

'Grant's Heart' is the first track with vocals. It's also one of the fastest tunes, a mid tempo song in the middle of slow but groovy rock tunes. 'Violent Lights' takes the listener back to the path of the previously mentioned tracks, again balancing on that edge between post and psychedelic. With every song I'm becoming more and more convinced of the powerful live experience that Yawning Man will probably be. I never had the chance to see them live but I think that will change very soon as this album will be supported by a massive tour.

The ever expanding musical universe of Yawning Man is stunning. Firmly rooted in the era where bands like Pink FLoyd and Hawkwind carefully crafted a new genre, these Americans are not afraid to look forward. 'Misfortune Cookies' is one of my favorites, a jam (which is a bit too short for me) that brings back memories of 3rd Ear Experience gigs. As I said earlier, I can't wait to experience these tracks live. The album will undoubtedly appear quite often in my day-to-day playlist and if you're a psychedelic stoner post rock fan, I recommend you do the same.


Serge

psychedelic rock

It's strange to experience memories from festivals I have never been to. Especially with the recent psychedelic rock revival I often picture myself at an event like Woodstock or Jazz Bilzen, enjoying the wild guitar solos and immersive bass lines of the bands on stage.

On one hand it's unfortunate that those days are over. Festivals no longer have that "free" feeling. On the big ones, there are more security people and police than people on stage. The sound is rarely at a satisfactory level and the whole thing has to close at eleven in order to avoid complaints from neighbours.

Then again, when the right music makes a solid return, so does the outrageous festival experience. Smaller ones are popping up like mushrooms, pleasing crowds with surprisingly vintage sounding bands. The hippies will dance again, the doomers will smile and the psychedelic rockers will once again float beyond the clouds. That is basically the feeling I have when I listen to this new album by French psych-rockers Domadora.

'Lacuna' is their third album after 'Tibetan Monk' (2013) and 'The Violent Mystical Sukuma' (2016). The album contains four tracks, each one lifting the jam-capacities to new and unheard levels. 'Lacuna Jam' opens the whole thing, immediately delivering the goods. With heavy guitars, almost tangible bass lines and energetic drums, Domadora quickly gets the audience on their feet and shaking their behinds.

Basically, the album is one long jam session. It seems like the bass guitar delivers a firm foundation on which the rest of the band can freely improvise. That results in some wicked psychedelic passages but also in soothing post rock and groovy stoner doom. The massive 'Genghis Khan' is a perfect example of that. This tune is certainly capable of entertaining large groups of traditional psychedelic rock fans.

There a plenty of big names to compare this music to, from krautrockers like Can or Amon Düul II over the psychedelic music of Pink Floyd to the groovy rock of Hawkwind and Led Zeppelin, it's all here. Closer 'Tierra Last Homage' comes up with some neat vintage Black Sabbath riffage too, only adding more level of high quality rock 'n roll to the whole thing. So yeah, this is a brilliant piece of psychedelic jam rock, recommended for everyone at those hot summer festivals.


​Serge

indie rock

The Netherlands might be one of the most underrated countries as far as music is concerned. I often talk about their bands with other people and they just lift their shoulders. Yet, bands like Golden Earring, The Gathering, Shocking Blue, Pestilence and Junkie XL have certainly put their mark on their respective genres. Besides, let's not to forget Eddie Van Halen, who is still regarded as one of the greatest guitarists of all time. There is a massive amount of talent in The Netherlands, with many artists exploring the boundaries of genres, finding unique ways to express themselves and paying tribute to the wonderful world that music really is. 


Mummy's A Tree resides in Nijmegen. The band was formed back in 1996 by Stefan van den Berg in order to cope with his mother's early passing. Inspired not only by this tragedy but also by the 'Jesus Christ Superstar' musical and Beatles albums, van den Berg started composing his own songs. On his first concert he tells people that his guitar is made from a graveyard tree. More concerts and three albums followed. 'Strange Darling', 'Loft Music for Millions yet Unaware' and 'Cadmium' each came with a different line-up and a different musical vision. Now, 'Goodbye Stratosphere' has been released. For this album, Stefan invited Martin Luiten (guitars), Rick Weren (bass) and Imre Elzer (drums).

The album opens with 'A Little Lightness' which immediately showcases the emotional yet experimental nature of the music. In a way, the music follows a path similar to artists like The Beatles, David Bowie and Pink Floyd but van den Berg is not afraid to deviate from that path and get lost in the woods. 'Oak Tree Yard' is a quite strange but mostly fascinating song, borrowing from psychedelic rock and Americana. It has a very narrative nature, a gloomy overtone but still something playful. The gritty but immersive ballad 'Heaven Is A Game' is one of my favorite tracks here. Here, hints of grunge rock seem to appear, coated in an emotional singer-songwriter jacket. There must be at least on Buckley album in van den Berg's collection.

Now, there are some big names in this review and I have to say that Mummy's A Tree didn't borrow their easy-listening capacities. Most of the songs have an experimental nature, which needs more than one quick listen to be fully appreciated. That obviously doesn't mean that you can't enjoy the excellent guitar work in '1000 Years', not at all. It just means that this album needs to be explored, needs to grow on the listener. It will demand your full attention. But if you are a sucker for deeply emotional music, songs like 'I'm Going Down' and 'Pyjamas & Snow Boots' are definite must-hears. This is all excellent indie rock, laced with old school psychedelic pop, recommended for everybody who like his music a tiny bit different.


Serge 

psychedelic rock / stoner rock

bandcamp

Death Trip is an album by Greek stoner rock band Hazy Sea, released on June 20. Thirty six minutes long, the record has seven tracks: Dolphin On The Fly, Siren, The Aviator, Nothing's Done Until It's Over, Samothraki, The Promise and Memories Of A Different Life. With very beautiful, precise and vividly organic melodies, Death Trip is quite a beautiful, sincere and elegant album, with a very serene, colorful and charming atmosphere. With a very unique musical gravity, definitely this state of the art work can be qualified as one of the best albums of the year. On the first few seconds listening to it, you are completely persuaded by the splendorous density of its extraordinary beauty. 

The harmonies are exceedingly energetic, pulsating and intense, although they can be sensationally moderate at the same time. The group has a very acute and graceful sense of timing, and the guitar lines that adorns the music gives to its graciously dynamic features a very singular and fantastic shape. Definitely, just in a few moments into the album, it’s impossible not to love nor appreciate this amazingly expansive, creative, sagacious and wonderfully marvelous work of art.  

The synergy between the harmonies are simply a major quality within the work. With a signature sound that runs between the audacity of a majorly peculiar creativity and the outline of a traditional rock savagery – as the album progresses –, Death Trip reveals itself to be more and more surprising, elegant, sober and lucid, with consolidated principles of artistry that really leaves the listener undoubtedly thrilled and amazed.   

With some passages that I would like to qualify as primordial to the development of the genre, the album presents some interesting stylistic features, that gives to the sound a more impulsive, natural and genuine outlook on the spontaneous vivacity of the music. The result is a tremendously effective and sensitive sonorous journey, that breaks away entirely from the predictability of its patterns.   

Although the album is a little too short – it’s one and only negative aspect – you can listen again as soon as the album is over, and then again, and again and again. You will hardly have enough of Death Trip. It’s a fantastic journey throughout a very vibrating and authorial rock album. 


Wagner  

psychedelic / blues / rock

On The Waves Of Time is an album released on June 22, by German Psychedelic rock group The Moonshine Brand. Forty four minutes long, the record has eight tracks: Menace To Society, Free Your Mind, Humble Queen, Surfing Through Space, Delusion, Acquainted Blues, Wasted With You (No Time For The Blues) and Daughter Of The Moon. A typical work done within the basic premises of the genre, On The Waves Of Time is a moderately good work. While you can’t expect anything sensational or especially relevant, it’s impossible to deny the astounding and sincere qualities the album amazingly displays, in a genuine atmosphere of positive and deliberately restrained acid rock vibe, and the intelligent, impressive disposition of melodies, adequately positioned at the epicenter of a harmonious layer of direct and immaculate devotion to the genre.

With a sagacious level of originality, that accurately displays a flexible sensibility and a gracious level of creativity, despite its overwhelming simplicity, On The Waves Of Time is a lucid and gracefully designed work of art, that lives by the precious honesty – and the inherent limitations – of the genre. With mostly calm and serene melodies, the songs generally delivers on the ostensibly gracious and unforgettable demise of its rhythmic dissolutions the sagacity and the resignation of its renegade, but wonderfully pure style. 

While you can’t expect anything too authentic or rapturous, undoubtedly, On The Waves Of Time is a very satisfactory record. As a matter of fact, if you maintain your expectations on the right level, you can have quite a good time listening to it. The work do represent with major competence the genre, and The Moonshine Brand vibrantly displays a decent degree of originality, despite some restrictions, and the tremendous – and quite natural – amount of influence they absorbed from their predecessors. 

For avid enthusiasts of the genre, On The Waves Of Time can be quite enjoyable.  If you are passionate for the genre, this certainly helps. The album definitely has strong merits – in fact, more merits than deficiencies –, although the uniformity and the excessive calmness of the melodies do produce a tiresome sense of monotony after a while, that can be quite hard to deal with. Nevertheless, the record is very good, although I think that in the proper place or situation – like a party or if you’re preparing to go to a party, or in a car driving randomly accompanied by friends listening out loud in a Saturday night – the work does a lot better than listening to it all alone by yourself.  


Wagner

ambient / experimental / noise

Krysalisound

doom / sludge metal

experimental / avant garde

drone / electronic / ambient

hardcore / crust / black metal

psychedelic rock / stoner rock

indie / alternative rock / psychedelic rock

dream pop / trip hop

dark ambient / neoclassical / dark jazz

krautrock / psychedelic rock

death metal / deathcore

rock

groove metal

Serge

space rock / psychedelic rock

I kicked off today's writing session with a paragraph about the human race, mother earth and dangerous things from outer space. Well, I'd like to stay in outer space for a bit longer, partially because here on earth things are getting weirder by the day.

However, I also want to float around the galaxy to hear some immersive music, dedicated to and inspired by our incomprehensible universe. Space rock is still one of the most captivating musical styles this planet has ever seen and the Øresund Space Collective is perhaps one of the most interesting acts within that genre.


Øresund Space Collective is a loose Danish and Swedish collective, specialized in long, improvised jam sessions. On this album that is no different, except perhaps for the fact that Gary from Yawning Man decided to join in on the fun. They spend a couple of days jamming, having fun and making love to their instruments and eventually came out with 'Chatoyant Breath', an album containing some elaborate space rock tracks that is too nice to ignore.

Although I have to say, opener 'Peaceful Patterns' seems to start somewhat hesitant. For some reason it feels like the first few minutes of this track are warming up practices. However, not to worry, halfway through the song the band has lifted off with great flair, resulting is fantastic guitar solos, immersive bass lines, trippy keyboards and a constantly forward pushing set of drums. The band seems to be floating alongside the spaceships of Ozric Tentacles and Pink Floyd.

They continue the blissful journey throughout the other tunes, highlighting frequently. In fact, I really have no favorite on this album. As far as I'm concerned, this is simply one massive jam session, one that I will definitely be playing a lot in the foreseeable future. Actually, I ended my previous review with a Dunk! festival reference. Well, I'd like to do that here too. I doubt that there will be better space rock to be found than this one, honestly.


​Serge

psychedelic rock / stoner rock

Holy Oak is an album released on May 25 by Italian psychedelic/ blues rock group Mr Bison. Forty six minutes long, the record has nine tracks: Roots, Sacred Deal, Heavy Rain, Earth Breath, Holy Oak, The Bark, The Wave, Red Sun and Beyond the Edge. With an impressive and firm, but exceedingly concentrated and aggressive energy, Holy Oak has on the axis of its persistently free, but strident melodies the grace of its salutary motivations and ambitions, with all the traditional rhythmic features that the genre has, in abundance, to please – but concomitantly counterbalance – the pervasive elements of its own ferocity. 

With generally calmer, but heavily punctuated and savage melodies – exceedingly beautiful on the surface of its sonorous shape – the pristine style of Mr Bison is strong, objective and direct; rapidly feels and circulates over the hardline of its acid creative ventures, with pungent guitar lines that define the sensibility of its graceful, latent and rude style. Nonetheless, despite an apparent simplicity, there is an expansive, but serene brutality overtly diffuse under the stringent and tense intonations of its sentimental cadences of vigorous and harmonious density. 

A very compact album, where effusive and dilacerating guitar lines coldly calculate the nuances where the soul of the rhythm reads the elements of a horizon of colorful and crystalline creativity – although its anatomy seems a little fragile, sometimes – despite the fact that Holy Oak does not bring new components to the table, there is an audacious feeling of genuine introspection present in the music, that slowly revolves around its own subtle beauty, over and over.  

There is an effervescent and cohesive grandiosity that comes along with the sound, but it is way more subtle than what it seems; completely submerged on the magic of its creative waves, the listener can feel its craving honesty flowing through the veins of its precious and raw originality. Mr Bison certainly aggregates new elements to the art of psychedelic music with this work, departing from the quintessential nature of their own rough premises. Definitely, Holy Oak is an album that enthusiasts of the genre will ardently love and appreciate. 


Wagner

krautrock / psychedelic rock / garage rock

It's hot in Belgium. Everybody is covered in sweat and the sun burns people's skin. Under a clear sky, with only a few clouds to be found, the city is suffering from the smog coming out of the exhaust pipe of the countless of diesel cars on the highway. People carry on their daily tasks, weary and out of breath. I see them walking in the streets, dragging themselves along the pavement, barely able to see what happens on their smartphones. In here, the center of my living room, a mild breeze is blowing. There is ice-tea, or other refreshments. There is also the music by German psych rockers Vibravoid, transforming my speakers into time machines. Summer is coming.

The music transforms my living room into a sixties or early seventies festival meadow. Instead of bright daylight, it is now dark, late at night but still warm. On the stage and on a few screens surrounding the area there are plasma projections. There is feedback, fuzz and noise coming out of the speakers, followed by immersive rock music. People are dancing, drinking, smiling. I bet some of them are stoned out of their mind, but hey, it's the sixties. Everything is allowed in here. Look, there is even a couple getting in on...

Fantasy can be a fun thing but fact is, I can perfectly envision all these happenings while I listen to Vibravoid. On 'Vibrations From The Cosmic Void', the band once again wildly elaborates on old school psychedelic rock, kraut- and garage rock. Opening with the gritty rock tune 'Vibrations From The Cosmic Void Part II', this album takes you along everything that was fantastic about those decades. Personally, I prefer the long tracks, like the massively immersive 'Melodies Of The Stars'. These feel like enormous jam sessions, floating three feet above the ground.

Of course, Vibravoid has been featured here before, not that long ago. I remember me complaining about the band's mission to "revive a dead genre", something I simply don't believe in. However, I won't complain this time. Reviving or not, dead genre or not, this album is a brilliant piece of work, destined to overtake big stages a psychedelic festivals. There's plenty of those nowadays so I really hope I soon get the chance to see these plasma projections and hear this mind altering music.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to travel through time and space on the tones of 'The Intergalactical Playground'...


​Serge