Reviews: Moon Coven, Methadone Skies, Kari-Band, Pentral (Reviews By Paul Hutchings & Paul Scoble)

As relentless as the stream of bullshit from the hole in Matt Hancock’s face, Sweden continues to throw fuzzed up stoner rock bands out into the big wide world. Moon Coven’s latest album, Slumber Wood which follows from their eponymous release of 2016. It’s everything you’d expect from a band named Moon Coven. The Sabbath influences are strong, with thunderous riffs and downtuned guitar work crunching away. There’s also more than a splash of psychedelia influences across this album, with echoes of Floyd and The Black Angels evident. David Leban’s echoing, sorrowful vocals fit the sound perfectly, whilst the additional guitars of Axel Ganhammar and Justin Boyesen and the crashing percussion of drummer Fredrick Dahlqvist ensure that the music has a gnarly, heaviness.

Tracks include the meandering drive of Pot Belly Hill, the pulsing Eye Of The Night and the expansive journey on Eye Of The Night. There is a natural tendency to repeat the same style but although there is a familiarity in the writing, the pulsing, driving rhythmic exploration gives sufficient variation to maintain interest. By all accounts Moon Coven have opened for Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats, Monolord and Blue Pills. Some big hitters in the stoner world and one that has clearly worked as there is little to dislike on this release. The huge sound reverberates on Seagull, there is a bit of the bizarre on Bahgsu Nag and plenty of thunderous rumblings throughout.

With more music already well on the way to being released, Slumber Wood allows the listener to immerse themselves into a trippy world of stoner rock at its best. Close those eyes and depart this ugly world. Enter the Slumber Wood, relax and find yourself. It may be the best 40 minutes you spend today. 8/10

Methadone Skies - Retrofuture Caveman (Self Released) [Paul Scoble]

Hailing from Timisoara, Romania, Methadone Skies have been making music together since 2009. The four piece, made up of Alexandru Wehry on Guitar, Casian Stanciu on Guitar, Mihal Guta on Bass and Flavius Retea on Drums and Keyboards, are an instrumental act who play a mix of Psychedelic Rock, Stoner Doom and Post Rock. Retrofuture Caveman is the bands 5th album; their first release was an Ep called Explosion Of The Sun, which was released in 2010, their debut album Enter The Void was released in 2012, follow up Eclectic Electric arrived in 2014, third album Colosseus was released in 2016 and the bands fourth album Different Layers Of Fear came out in 2019. Retrofuture Caveman has taken 2 years to produce, what have the four Romanians got for us this time?

The album opens with the 17 minute title track. Retrofuture Caveman is all about dynamics and build up. The track is mainly blissful and uplifting Post Rock riffs repeated to form a hypnotic and trance inducing rhythm. The intensity builds as the track progresses, so a riff that started in a minimal way, becomes a huge and heavy riff after a couple of minutes of growth. The track has a several minute long drone section before returning to the riffs, that by this stage are huge and heavy. Infected By Friendship is dreamy Post Rock which builds in intensity during the track and has a pleasant, relaxed tempo.
Third track, The Enabler is tauter and heavier than the track that preceded it, it has a driving, hypnotic tempo. Western Luv ’67 is dreamy, blissful Post Rock that has several big, heavy sections, and ends with a section that is very heavy, and has a nice bit of added dissonance, which helps the track to stand out in all the dreamy blissfulness.

The album comes to an end with the track When The Sleeper Awakes which is a driving mix of Post Rock and Doom, the track feels hypnotic and builds to massive doom hugeness. The track is dramatic and bombastic with great riffs and is a cracking way to end the album. Retrofuture Caveman is a great piece of instrumental Post Rock/Psych Rock/Doom album. The album works on build up and diminish, the ebb and flow of this album is very impressive; Riffs that start out small, quiet and introverted after a few repetitions become huge, pounding riffs that sound and feel huge. The lack of a singer does mean that in a few places this album feels as if it could do with a little more melody; a few melody leads would have helped, but this is only in a small number of places, for the most part this is a very enjoyable and interesting album. 7/10

Kari-Band with Friends - Live At Streaming (JPU Records) [Paul Hutchings]

Originally formed by three Japanese session musicians who are live members of Baby Metal, Kari-Band aimed to push their boundaries in the genres of jazz, prog, and funk. Sadly, guitarist Mikio Fujioka passed away suddenly in January 2018 which resulted in an understandable pause in proceedings. One year on and bassist BOH and drummer Yuya Maeta picked up where they had paused and drafted in students and friends of Fujioka to guest on an array of tracks on their second EP.

This release combines three of the band’s livestream sessions and features Takashi Masuzaki (guitar), Tatsuya Nishiwaki (Keyboard and harmonica), Yucco Miller (saxophone) and Satoshi Oka (guitar). All musicians with a pedigree and CV to be worthy of inclusion on such a release. Setting it up, the first thing you notice is that this is long. 104 minutes to be precise. The songs flit from a few shorter 3–4-minute pieces to the meandering, freestyle flow of tracks like Pleasure, Song Of My Heart, Shinjuku and Impressions. The latter two clocking in at over 11 minutes each. The musicianship is astonishing. The interplay fabulous and the relaxed, collegiate approach makes it an enjoyable listen. 

At times it’s simply staggering how a group of musicians can produce such quality. Having said that, if you don’t like the experimental and unorthodox style of expressive music that Kari-Band produce, then this clearly isn’t for you. The tempos vary, the atmosphere and temperature switch from intoxicating highs to calmer, sweeter lows (Song Of My Heart being one of the latter pieces). The variety is also one that could be appreciated by those not into any of the forms referenced here. If you cannot appreciate Miller’s stellar saxophone playing, the intricate and almost telepathic rhythmic grooves of BOH and Maeta, then you may need to clean your ears a bit better. Suffice, this is an album that won’t appeal to all. In fact, it may not appeal to that many but for me, it works from start to finish in a way few albums do. I suggest that if you are curious about your musical tastes, a listen to Kari-Band may be something well worth an hour or so of your time. 8/10

The opening track Aiming For The Sun is a good example of Pentral’s style of Metal, it’s driving and up tempo with tight riffs and great vocals. All My Wounds is another up tempo track, however this one has a slightly more taut and minimal feel and a great, expansive chorus. Disconnected is another standout track, an uptempo, driving rocker. It’s nice and fast with a very tuneful chorus and is probably the best track on the album. Second to last track The Shell I’m Living In is another really decent rocker, it’s mid tempo with a great chorus and an energy packed second half.

 
It’s not all good though, there are some problems with this album. The track Are You Satisfied is ploddy and lacklustre with a saccharine chorus. The album also has a ballad with the track Gift From God, which is fine while it’s just acoustic guitar and vocals, but goes astray when the drums and bass come in and that saccharine, sickly sweet feeling is back, which is a shame. There is also a little bit of blandness on here, the song The Law feels weak and watered down. The guitars feel like they have been neutered and don’t stand out and as a result the song feels drab and unexciting. 

However, this isn’t a bad album, it just need some work to bring all the material up to the same standard. This is a debut album, so on the whole I think the band have made a good album, that with some tweaks could be a great album. A strong, decent debut, that hints at a band that could produce really great material, but isn’t quite there yet. 7/10