QUICK HIT: SAUTRUS - "ANTHONY HILL"

Sautrus are a traditional 4 piece band consisting of one guitar, one bass, one drummer, and one vocalist. But that's where the traditional ends. They managed deserved notoriety in 2014 with the release of their second album "Reed", a magnificent blend of controlled stoner, doom, and psychedelic dynamite woven into their own signature sound. Now Sautrus are back with a new release, "Anthony Hill", and as with any follow up to success there is obvious pressure to match or surpass past accomplishments. Sautrus absolutely manages to deliver freshness with familiarity and boldness in this 7 track romp through soaring psychedelic brightness, subterranean doom rumblings, agile desert melodies, and stoner riffs of raw power, blending those traditional sounds into something lustrous, thick, and adamantian, every facet inducing carnal appetites for the syrupy black sweetness of their fuzzy machinations.

Hailing from Tricity of the Pomeranian region of northern Poland, Sautrus are perhaps on the brink of renown having now released three solid stoner/desert/doom/psychedelic rock albums of substantial heft, the latest of which is unsurpassed in quality, excitement, and potency.

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New Band To Burn One To: Stonerror

Sometimes a tune hits you at the right place, right time.  I was in that neighborhood when I put on the new EP from the Kraków, Poland four piece Stonerror called Rattlesnake Moan.  The title track is a glorious blend of space fuzz guitar overlaid atop of a hypnotic bassline that couples perfectly with the tribal drum work and hissing vocals.  The first track on the EP, Jericho, is a seven minute journey of dynamics and emotion.  Glad I was cruising by, this band made my day.    

Stonerror describe themselves as a psychedelic stonerpunk band and that fits better than anything I could write.  Picture a Minor Threat-era Ian MacKaye fronting a band that somehow combines My Sleeping Karma with Sir Lord Baltimore.  

It is an excellent debut and something different that you really must check out. 

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-WM

LP Review: Lemanis by Spaceslug

Heavy space stoner sludge doom this way comes! Having only been a band for less than a year, Poland’s Spaceslug have released a cosmic trip of a record, slowly creeping you towards the black hole of oblivion with its monstrous riffs, claustrophobic muffled singing, and drumming louder than the big bang: Lemanis is something pretty special.

As ‘Proton Lander’ slowly awakens to a new dawn of layered trudging riffs inviting you on to a different astral plain, the track’s pace begins to quicken before the gut-slicing guitar lines come in to devastating effect. The bass lines build, the drums, largely dominated with cymbals, are huge and almost completely dominate, and the vocals never breach above a carefree muttered discussion, blending into the sea of musical notes as another instrument. As you’re listening acutely to the vocals to decipher them, that’s when the true power of the drums and guitars really kick in and take you off guard; it’s a powerful tactic and works with aplomb.

‘Proton Lander’ seems almost timid once the power of ‘Hypermountain’ is unleashed with its razor sharp riffs from the get go, each additional guitar line and drum smash fighting over the next to be the loudest, most grandiose in destructive power. It’s a song which is all face melting and head banging in all the right places, showing the bands destructive side that isn’t floating away on a cloud of cosmic acid, that’s shown on ‘Supermassive’, right before it too completely rearranges your face with its heavy distorted riffs and frankly so on point drumming that it could be a solo record of just the percussion and we’d be happy.

It’s perhaps not surprising to learn that two members of Palm Desert (Kamil Ziółkowski on drums and Jan Rutka on bass) feature in Spaceslug (along with Bartosz Janik on guitar – all three members sing) as the band is so well rounded with an underlying stoner sound that echoes along the pine of these soon to be Polish giants. Lemanis is a heavy, trippy, destructive, hypnotising, just stunning record (I’ve already purchased the CD awaiting a vinyl release) that will probably improve your life! Go. Get. Now!

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