Highlights include: "Conquistadors" and "Baba Yaga".
From: Columbus, Ohio. Rating: 3/5
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BRUJAS DEL SOL - Moonliner
If there were a band today that has been featured on this blog that takes the otherworldly aspects of psychedelic music and stretches them out to cosmis proportions, it's Brujas Del Sol. Velvet snow falls from cloudless purple skies onto a sea of trees waving breezelessly in the airless void of some distant moon. These are the dulcit tones of 'Moonliner'.
This LP, soon to be released on Devouter Records, is a compilation of sorts. A collection of the group's singles which shouldn't work to create a solid and coherent listening experience but does.
Psychedelic drone is the band's drug of choice and they would have the listener nearly overdosing on repetition. Long stretched out grooves test the tensile strength of some of these compositions nearly to the breaking point. The best analogy to make on this front would be that the band take the role of Sheherazad of the Arabian Nights, never able to finish telling her story upon fear of death, digging in for an endless story cycle that tells no overall story but doesn't need to. The art is in the telling.
The particular brand of psychedelia that Brujas Del Sol produce is not missionary music, the dreamy often ethereal and long-winded passages are successful in just having taken place. Once the proper groove has been found the band pin their ears back and just keep going, battening down the hatches, hammering their point home with casual ease.
With that as a starting point, there are definitely moments of downright catchiness, such as "Conquistadors", "Baba Yaga" and "Satanic Surf Girls ..." as tracks to look out for in particular. On these, fuzz rock, alt rock and even surf rock all in their turns become the beacons which bring the band's psychedelic ship into harbor.
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| Early Mammal - Horror At Pleasure
Highlights include: "Money Shot" and "Resurrection
Men". From: London, England. Rating: 3.5/5
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Early Mammal take psychedelic rock, drag it by its patchouli greased dreds through the dark woods at night, shotgun in tow. Through black masses and repeated animal sacrifice the band slowly convinces their victim of the righteousness of their actions until a Stockholm syndrome is developed. Dark psychedelic music then springs fully armored from the forehead of Early Mammal and it's called 'Horror at Pleasure', an apt title indeed.
I can't tell you what it is for sure about this album and the music contained herein, but there's a major occult vibe going on. It jumps out at you like a skeleton leaps from a closet when least expected. Occult may or may not be hitting the mark because the vocals are hard to discern at times (more on this later), but there is a dangerous vibe to this album. It drips with rock n' roll danger. It's a darkness that goes way beyond dressing in black, turning crosses upside down and playing downtuned. This is what conservative parents of the 1950's and 1960's were afraid rock music would turn into. A snarling, smirking, hyper-sexualized beast of mind-expanding / mind-destroying melodic noise. Early Mammal are the Rolling Stones transposed as youngsters to the punk era and possessed by taloned devils.
Take instrumental number "Checking The Bullshitter's Queen" for example. "What does that even mean?" the conservative parents would ask and the music would be like, "if you don't get it now you never will." The music explodes into ever more esoteric territory the further into the album one goes, the band skipping from long instrumental segment to long instrumental segment, cracking many a skull and taking many a name along the way. A whole world of sounds is their stomping ground and Early Mammal stride long, their reach is wide, conquering vast tracts of territory as they go.
It's apparent that Early Mammal took great care to develop this album as a cohesive whole with a distinctive voice lent to songs linked by instrumental interludes and that fade in and out atop one another. In this way 'Horror At Pleasure' is a satisfying listening experience that never jars the listener out of its dark world.
The mixing of this album leaves a bit to be desired with the guitar dominating to the detriment of the vocals which are often buried beneath layers of effects, but for the most part at the very least the melody carries through. In the end the obscurity of the vocals only adds to the dark and dangerous depravity of Early Mammal's 'Horror At Pleasure'.
Genre: Psychedelic, Stoner
Release Date: April 1, 2013 (Early Mammal); April 15, 2013 (Brujas Del Sol)
Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: Go to a gravel pit at night, pretend it's the moon and howl at the earth.
Better Reviews:
Stoner Hive Brujas Del Sol review
Heavy Planet Early Mammal review
Stoner Hive Early Mammal review
GET THEM BOTH HERE
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