(Southern Lord)
Total Time: 44:29
We start with a nice introduction of the guitar and keys that brought to mind “Blaze for Glory” the basic guitar rifle of BON JOVI from “Young Guns” OST. Pictures from desert and wild west so along with Steven Spielberg’s 80’s film, a nice start. Here we will find shorter tracks in this disc, but larger in intensity. Quite “saunas” style in fast style up to the 4th track. You feel like you are in the mountains with a purebred motorbike and no jumps and turns and excursions to dirt hills.
All this until the “Cold Hope” of an epic Post Metal Rock riff, heavy like an anvil and drums, breaks the sound in a thousand pieces! Spinning and stuffing the drums along with the Maiden-ique and PARADISELOSTguitar styles create a nice “paranoia” that you think you are on a boat and you are moving right and left in the middle of a raging ocean. Until the climate and waters “calm down” at the closure of the track with its Outro. So far, the best piece in the middle of the album.
We are going back to where they started from the introduction of the album “It Stared at Me” with this cowboy subdued and subliminal riff but in more psychedelic Stoner Prog styles of MY SLEEPING KARMA. Naturally, this song was nothing but an introduction to the very barbarous track title of the album that such a Rif would like the KYUSS to have written! Very Heavy material indeed. Especially at 2:55’’ it has a cut like a stripped version of Outro of “Davidian” of MACHINE HEAD. A highlight moment. The album continues on Stoner’s heavy and crude style at “Arteries Of Blacktop”, but here PELICAN felt a sophisticated need to want to look like KARMA TO BURN without “going out” so naturally. Well, the Sabbath point is at 3:40’’ that saves the track and does not make it so “awkward” between the rest of the album. Sufficiently finishing on the opening of the last track “Full Moon Black Water” a nice “journey” epilogue as PELICAN has been learning us over the years.
To sum up, this is a nice new work with heavy material, without getting away from the band’s known formula. An instrumental Post Metal, Stoner Rock, Doom album perfect for listening, evening time especially after 10p.m. Perhaps in this album the “dessert element” is more intense and the reddish part of the desert catches more space in the sound color of the band. I’m looking forward to hear this record at their upcoming Fuzz concert, this October in Athens!
Rating: 6,5/10
Nikos Mathiopoulos
