Reviews: White Dog, Red Spektor, Rumours, Attick Demons (Reviews By Matt Bladen)

Austin retro rockers White Dog have seemed to pulled it out of the bag with their debut album signing to Lee Dorrian's Rise Above Records, a man who knows about retro if you've read anything written by the man about rare LP's from the 60's and 70's. White Dog's debut album has a real sense of being a lost classic, especially if you love the dual guitar harmonies of bands such as Thin Lizzy who White Dog have an uncanny audio resemblance too. The band are formed by five troublemakers from Austin, brought together when brothers Carl (guitar) and John Amoss (drums), joined friends Rex Pape (bass), Clemente De Hoyos (guitar) and Joe Sterling (vocals), they closed ranks and brewed their own style of hard rock that pays tribute to the classics while retaining a fire of their own, you can hear their friendship imbue this album with a sense of camaraderie that bleeds into a record of frothing heavy, progressive, psychedelic, hard rock. 

Opening with the Sawtooth the dual guitars coming with wild abandoned, as Black Powder has Humble Pie-esque blues dirtiness to it The Lantern brings a groovy edge that's inspired by the numerous retro occult rockers around today, but never strays too far to make the record feel too convoluted or far away from their goal of playing music the old school way, even in the production there's an analogue warmth with a resonant guitar in each ear, a throbbing bass rumble meeting with the pulasting drumming that adds an edge to rockers such as Crystal Panther and the fizzing Pale Horse. White Dog have come straight out of the gate swinging with this classy record full of proto-metal, they are very welcome addition to the Rise Above roster, expect big things. 8/10   

Red Spektor: Heart Of The Renewed Sun (Kozmik-Artifactz)

Stoke-On-Trent psychedelic blues trio Red Spektor return to Earth with their second full length album of fuzzy heavy rocking driven by the crunchy, thick as syrup bottom end from Jonny Esp (drums) and Rob Farrell (bass) along with the wild vocals and biting guitar playing of John Scane, Heart Of The Renewed Sun is a throwback to the late 60's early 70's heavy riffing of bands such as Blue Cheer and Atomic Rooster with obviously a little Sabbath worship and a sprinkling of the Jimi Hendrix Experience for balance. 

The band's previous releases have been critically acclaimed and you can hear why this is as soon as the funky, untamed opening riff of Wallflower which evolves into a swirling psych guitar solo as the mind melting psych builds up on the Revol a track where the vocals don't even kick in until about a third of the way through as we yet again go higher into the interstellar realms on Guilded Tears where they take things into a more elongated form with a lot of transient leads and hypnotic underpinned groove. Heart Of The Renewed Sun is Red Spektor refining and tweaking their stoner rock sound with some space rock horizons allowing them to spread their wings on the more widescreen explorations on Hell To Pay. If their previous releases were key to their ascension to the top of the stoner rock scene then Heart Of The Renewed Sun s them adding yet more to their armoury ready for their conquest. 7/10  

Rumours: Neither Innocent Nor Wavering (Lupercalia Records)

In keeping with a theme we have yet more occultish, retro-infused, stoner styled hard rocking this time from Germany. Neither Innocent Nor Wavering is a four track explosion of noisy open chord riffs, punky abrasive vocals and a real attitude problem which moves through bands such as Clutch and Red Fang but also more post-hardcore sounds like Kvelertak and Blood Command while Black Milk has the slinky Indie-goth of Grave Pleasures. Take this EP as a four track overview of what Rumours offer and it'll show you that their punky, rawk n roll will have ears pricking up and anticipation of a full length sooner rather than later. 6/10     

Portuguese heavy metal band Attick Demons have something of an identity problem, they desperately and I mean desperately want to sound like Iron Maiden, to the point that singer Arthur Almeida is a dead ringer for the Air Raid siren himself Mr Bruce Dickinson and many of the riffs sound suspiciously similar to latter day Maiden (Brave New World onwards) and also Bruce's heavier solo outings. So yeah you are going to get bass heavy gallops that you do with classic Maiden but you do get is distorted, battering thrash-like riffs across every song here as Almeida wails above the noise with his dead on impression. Now you can take this album as one of two ways, either it's a spot on homage to their main influence or they are a shameless copy. Either way there is a lot to enjoy here as Maiden fan, but that's about it, it doesn't do much else than exclusively appeal to Maiden fans 5/10