It’s not new stuff, but we don’t meet often Polish stoner bands, plus the band’s lovely promoter contacted me, and the record is coming on in autumn. This one is not bad at all, released throughout the world via stonerrock.com. Since 2002, the band mostly gives concerts in Poland, the Czech Republic and Lithuania. Let’s see if this Elvis is really of a deluxe kind!
On their own words, they play stoner, but they were influenced by a lot of stuff like psychedelia, seventies’ glam and garage rock. Luckily there’s no sign of Gary Glitter. In my opinion, the genre is Northern Stoner (everybody knows how it is, not dirty, with specific melodies, etc., check the ‘Swedish’ label). If you look closer, a lot of subtleties show up. It’s basically and in depth totally OK technically, sounds correct, not garage-like but not too heavy either.
As this kind of music can easily turn into background music, I always listen to these doing something else, reading for example, so as to spot the track that will catch my attention immediately. On the first half of the album Lazy, I found two and a half songs that made me bang my head, apart from the first track, but it doesn’t count.
A Perfect Ride, track 3 is one of them, it reminds me of Kyuss’ Blues for the Red Sun era, Green Machine for example, and something else, but I can’t remember what, for hell’s sake. It must be some Northern stuff. It’s brief and simple like a punk song, and includes a piano part.
The great thing about this album is that it contains a lot of mood boosters like synths or distorted singing, or this piano. It all makes songs peculiar, and should be more of them, they wouldn’t lose their flavor.
Sleep Brings No Relief, which follows A Perfect Ride of two, is also an appealing piece; it’s my favorite from the disc. The main theme reminds me a little of Queens of the Stone Age, the heavy riffs are accompanied by guitar vibratos summoning the seventies, drums using lots of tom-toms and the singing is like it was Josh Homme. This had been pieced together in a really cool way.
Then we have For the Soul on the second part of the album, in which the fast riffs – which could have taken on a harder sound – are altered with light psychedelia reminding me of Homme’s instrumentation. Classic space-synth sounds emerge in the track, and this time, the singing feels like Garcia, making it outstanding.
The following songs are quite good too, but unfortunately thrilling elements which could capture attention are lacking. The end track, Between Heaven and Hell is a bit of an exception, sounding differently and being more aggressive, but still, musically speaking it doesn’t bring a lot of novelties.
To sum up, the material is good, roughly the way where Kyuss meets Ponamero Sundown. If the mood remains and they manage to make tracks snappier and more peculiar and to sound more powerful, I’ll give them a 10/10. This album would get a 7/10, but I usually don’t give points.
http://www.myspace.com/elvisdeluxe
A glam gyökerek
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