Opening number "Bon Nou" begins quite restrained with a gently picked guitar arpeggio but then in comes a dirty bass motif and the song takes off on a galloping groove that leans to the more punkish side of stoner rock, a strident but not overly furious groove decorated in clean vocals that have a similar stoner punk dynamic. The pace is slowed down somewhat for the following "Dead Horse Requiem", musically the song has a proto-doomic feel, all reverberating riffage and thunderous rhythms, but boasts a very cool theatrical vocal melody not too disimilar to the melody utilized by rockabilly stalwarts Stray Cats on their UK chart bothering song "Stray Cut Strut". "Praise The Shadows" is up next a frizzy fuzzy medium paced rocker with an ear-catching verse/chorus/verse structure that features rhythms, chord progressions and guitar solos that sit at the more classic end of hard rock. "Echoes From Old Tree" begins dark dank and menacing but then morphs into something more akin to playful with choppy reggae(ish) chord work and swinging rhythms framing equally swinging vocal melodies, the song does take off on a few musical tangents along the way but overall the feel is more hard rock than heavy rock. There is a Deep Purple Mk III vibe to next song "Blood Spirit Rising" albeit without the keyboards, especially in its fiery closing passages where we find guitarist Nobu shredding a mix of bluesy and neo-classical flavoured guitar solos over bassist Laven and drummer Goblin's incessant rhythmic backdrops. "Yu gen" is restrained, psychedelic and grungy, both musically and vocally, and is punctuated with occasional burst of heaviness a trick that is repeated on final track "Yume we Kareno" only here the vocals , both lead and backing, are delivered a little more lilting and melodious.
Friday, 25 July 2025
HEBI KATANA ~ IMPERFECTION ... review
Tuesday, 22 July 2025
GAUPA ~ FYR..... review
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
WITCHSNAKE ~ SATANAS .... review
It's here again, you know what we are talking about, that time when you have to warn your neighbours that you are going to be playing a new album released by one of those bands from the Italian acid-doom/scuzz scene, another one of those many Italian bands that have traded in their Sabbathian robes for a seat at the altar of Electric Wizard. The band in question this time is Milan's Witchsnake a duo consisting of Al (guitars, bass and vocals) and Joe (drums), a duo who have already caused our neighbours collective ears to bleed with their previous releases "Witchsnake" and "Deathcult of the Snake". The band have just released their third album "Satanas" an album consisting of eight tracks the band have dubbed as "unholy hymns carved in smoke and sulfur" further backing this statement up by describing the album as "not a journey, but a collapse, a slow, suffocating crawl through burning swamps, shattered altars, and psilocybin-drenched visions of damnation". Sounds good to us!
Opening track "Hell Breaks Loose" is what Motorhead might have sounded like if they had chosen hallucinogens over amphetamines, it's breathy smoked too many cigarettes, drank too much Jack Daniels Lemmy-esque vocals are surrounded by rolling filth drenched refrains and powerhouse drumming offset with occasional bursts of Hendrixian flavoured soloing, it's a killer start but things get even better as the album progresses. Next we have "Dethroned", the songs low slung gritty riffage, interspersed with piercing distortion drenched guitar motifs and dissonant solos, is underpinned with solid thunderous drumming over which its vocals are intoned rather than sang, the songs boasts a groove that sits squarely in low'n'slow stoner doom territory but it is a pungent form of stoner doom that reeks of disease and decay. "Witchburner" follows and jams a more stoner rock-like dynamic and also features a vocal that bears a semblance of melody but don't start thinking that this song is any less pungent than its predecessor just because there is an element of flow in its vocals as the filthiness here is just as tangible. "Black Blood Bayou" is a demented travelogue that finds our hosts describing a place where you can witness "larvae crawling into the cracked skull" and where you can feel "the heat of death" against a backdrop of putrid thrumming proto-doom. "Ashes To Ashes, Fuck To Fuck" is a rhythmically hard driven instrumental packed to the rafters with some of the dirtiest guitar work you will witness this side of the rapture and is followed by title track "Satanas" a song that is akin to listening to Lemmy telling a bedtime story while an avalanche of giant boulders tumbles down a mountainside. Penultimate number "Demona" does seem somewhat more structured than much of what has gone before, what with its rolling refrains, punchy drumming and swirling solo's, but it's really hard to tell if something is structured while your ears are bleeding. Final track "Acid Hell" is a perfectly titled opus that comes out of the gate swinging and does not stop until your brain is just a jellied mush, filthy guitar solos accompanied by barely audible vocal rumblings and forceful percussion coming at you in face-melting wave upon wave of voluptuous volume.
© 2025 Frazer Jones
BIRDDOG ~ BIRDDOG .... review
Tuesday, 15 July 2025
LAZER ~ LIVE AT BEARDY MOUNTAIN ... review
Austria's Lazer, Tanja "Aunty" Peinsipp (vocals); Lukas Schmidt (lead guitar); Lukas Klingseisen (rhythm guitar); Moritz Holy ( bass/backing vocals) and Dale St. Jules (drums), jam grooves that sit mostly at the lithe and languid end of the psychedelic rock spectrum but that have a tendency to shift from time to time into heavier and gnarlier territories, the band one minute gently massaging their listeners ears with lilting guitar arpeggios, shimmering percussion and funky bass passages and the next tearing those same ears to shreds with crushing refrains, thunderous drumming and growling low end. What is even more impressive is that those see-sawing dynamics are also mirrored in the bands vocals which can sway between honeyed jazzy bluesiness and demonic sludgy harshness. The band have just released "Live At Beardy Mountain" a live in the studio recording that serves as the perfect listening material for those who like psychedelic rock that occasionally bares its teeth.
Opening number "Underwater" begins with liquid-like eastern guitar motifs accompanied by a low key vocal, slowly those guitars and vocals are joined by the bass and drums in a groove that wends and winds between loose and lysergic and tight and blustering with the vocalist accommodating those shifts with tones that are bluesy and soulful in the songs more languid passages and throat shredding in the songs more intense and heavier sections. Next song "Can't Run Away" sways between being seductive and moody and full on and feisty, vocalist Peinsipp once again switching her vocals between lush and lethal over a musical backdrop that follows a similar fey and fractious blueprint. Third track "Can't Speak" is at its root bluesy and lysergic but because of its occasional descents into more doomic waters, and of course the vocalists penchant for sliding into harsher vocal territories, the song feels a whole lot heavier than it actually is. Final song "Go On" starts off quite quaint and dare we say "pretty" but as we have already found out "pretty" is not Lazer's default setting and it's not long before Peinsipp starts mixing up her ethereal tones with elements of hardcore harshness, Schmidt and Klingseisen start injecting some crunch and squeal into their guitar tones, St Jules' drums begin to get a little more thunderous and Holy's bass lines take on an air of growliness, its powerful stuff, a unique mix of melody and gnarliness we at Desert Psychlist are not sure many bands other than Lazer could pull off!
Saturday, 12 July 2025
HIBERNAUT ~ OBSIDIAN EYE .... review
Salt Lake City heavy groovesters Hibernaut, Dave Jones (guitar/vocals); Zach Hatsis (drums); Josh Dupree (bass) and Matt Miller (guitar), blew a fair few minds with their debut release "Ingress", ours included, musically the album sat somewhere between "DopeSmoker" era Sleep and "Children of the Haze" period Dopelord, a mix of sludge and stoner metal that also boasted prog-like elements and psychedelic essences, lyrically though "Ingress" album was in a class all of its own with otherworldly tales laid out like ancient poetry. "Ingress" was roundly praised on its release and grabbed Hibernaut a well deserved #15 place on the Doom Charts and it will come as no surprise to Desert Psychlist if the bands latest album "Obsidian Eye" (Olde Magick Records/ Kozmik Artifactz) matches that achievement or even betters it as "Obsidian Eye" is everything "Ingress" was but so much more..
The album begins with "Engorge Behemoth" a song that opens it account with dissonant dual guitars trading off against each other (especially effective through headphones) then shifts into a just shy of doomic paced stoner metallic groove underpinned with low gravelled bass and thunderously busy drumming. Vocals here are delivered gruff and bear like yet despite this retain much of their clarity, which is applaudable given how much thought that has gone into the lyrics. Next song "Venatic Rite" kicks off in a similar style to its predecessor only a touch more drone-like and murky but then a piercing guitar motif cuts through the murkiness and the band explode into hard-driven sludge meets thrash like groove around a full on and forceful vocal, on a sidenote you could almost be fooled into thinking the drums are the leading instrument here such is the force of their impact. Those drums are just as impactful on the following "Pestiferous" however they do not have it all their own way here as they have to contend with constantly swirling guitar solos, a powerfully performed vocal and a rolling bass line weightier than a ships anchor. Title track "Obsidian Eyes" rears its gnarly head next and like the songs before it this starts dissonant and drone-ish but then slams into a thunderously dark groove over which a powerful vocal tells of "sylphlike silhouettes" who stand "in shadow" and "sexless tattooed priests" with "nefarious intellect" in tones dripping with throaty contempt. By now you are probably hoping for a break from all the full on intensity and relentless furiosity but Hibernaut are not in agreement and instead plough on regardless with "Revenants" another sludgy stoner metal barn burning opus that gives no quarter, this one telling of "soupy skies" where "leviathans slither and twist". Final number "Beset" does not bring any respite from all the heaviness but it does slow down that heaviness to something approaching traditionally doomic, the guitar work here is blistering, the bass lines boneshaking, the drumming pounding and the vocals strong and gruffly sinister.
© 2025 Frazer Jones
Friday, 4 July 2025
SKULLDOZER ~ HIGH TIDE .... review
"Minimalist" is not how Desert Psychlist would describe Skulldozer's music but that is the legend sitting beneath the bands photo on their Bandcamp page, to be fair though they do follow that up with the sentence "loud riffs" and they are definitely words we at The Psychlist can get on board with. You would probably have to ask the band themselves why they decided to describe their music as "minimalist" but we are not going to do that instead we are going to just give you our thoughts on the bands new album "High Tide" and let you decide the rest.