Slomosa are a Stoner Rock band hailing from Norway. Their debut album was released in 2020 in the heat of the pandemic, I found it in 2021 after hearing about it on a random podcast that I listened to where the host drew comparisons between it and the first Queens Of The Stone Age album. Ever since my first listen I became obsessed with it to this very day, going on to see Slomosa twice live touring with Sasquatch and Elder respectively. It’s therefore safe to say that Tundra Rock was my most anticipated record of the year and now it’s finally here.
The opening track Afghansk Rev has us in undiscovered territory with the band as they give us their first take on an instrumental track. The slow drone in the background is immediately reminiscent of the opening to Blues For The Red Sun by Kyuss before we are dawned with chorus pedal effected bends which arch and curve into a hammer smash of distortion and continue to try and flutter afterwards while in distress like a bird attempting to battle against the elements.
Going on from that point, I would like to discuss the next two tracks in one, that being Rice and Cabin Fever as I consider them to be siblings of each other. Not only were they the first two singles off this record but they have a few similarities, they both carry on the instruments motifs from the first song, that being these rising and falling passages, I can relate it to the waterfall which spills across the album cover into the unknown below.
They both also see Slomosa approaching new dynamics within their sound, for example, there’s a search for answers that takes place on Rice between 2:45 and 4:03, covering yourself from dangers above as the instrumental is brought right down to almost a whisper before waking up and baring your brave head again, ready for what’s to come.
Later still we go into track six with Battling Guns. Just before this though, piano chords are played and the strike of midnight to mark a moment in time. The song presents shifting verses at pace, feeling dangerous much like the track title suggests. Honestly, the first time that I heard this song was at 3AM in the morning and I cried and I couldn’t understand why at the time but now it’s all so clear to me.
Later still we go into track six with Battling Guns. Just before this though, piano chords are played and the strike of midnight to mark a moment in time. The song presents shifting verses at pace, feeling dangerous much like the track title suggests. Honestly, the first time that I heard this song was at 3AM in the morning and I cried and I couldn’t understand why at the time but now it’s all so clear to me.
Battling Guns has three moments, the bass solo from Marie is heard loud and clear above the guitar riffage and plays with the trajectory from 2:24 to 2:55. Then from 3:00 to 3:53 Jard’s drumming is as smooth as butter and fits the rise in intensity from Benjamin and Tor’s guitars perfectly, before everything stretches out for relief like Jesus on a cross. Battling Guns is a beautiful song and is my favourite on the album.
Overall, Tundra Rock takes the catchiness of Slomosa’s debut and marries it with atmosphere providing more ideas and outcomes than ever before. This is a fantastic follow-up but they still have potential and are far from done. Slomosa are my favourite Stoner Rock band and I feel like that this album provides a very good reason for that. 9/10
Torso - Brain Cells (APF Records) [Matt Bladen]
It came from London in 2022 after the demise of Possessor, Graham Bywater's visceral horror thrash machine Torso shrieked bloodily from the grave with A Crash Course In Terror. Dirty, raw riffs, howled vocals, B-movie samples and horror themes are all pure Torso, continuing where he left off at the death of Possessor.
Brain Cells is the follow up to the debut and Graham again attacks his guitar and rages at his mic with more gore soaked nastiness. A bubbling blend of KISS schlock worship, hardcore thrash and even dirgy grunge, Brain Cells is a short stab of gruesomeness, oppressive and ferocious, though there's also a heavy influence of Goblin or Morricone on their Italian horror era, especially on the title track, which also features vocals from Lisa Bywater.
You Belong In Hell kicks off with the lo-fi fuzz, grinding bass and drums haunts Blood Frenzy as there's a shifting break on the psychedelic Savage Magic before more riffs come. Brain Cells is the follow up you would want, it's darker, meaner and takes a few more risks. This Torso continues to have a heart that beats to the sound of a Dario Argento score. 9/10
The Nail - The Nail (Frontiers Music Srl) [Simon Black]
Another day, another Frontiers Records Srl mash-up… or is it?
To be fair, Frontiers Records have been getting rather better at the kind of projects that are all about introducing new, younger talent across different markets, rather than their staple of career resurrection / Supergroup projects for label main man Serafino Perugino’s nostalgia list of 80’s Hard Rock and Metal heroes. I cite the label’s success with the likes of James Durbin as a great example of this and point out that they do well at finding such diamonds in the rough, giving them a shot at a broader audience than they might achieve on their own.
The normal modello operativo for the Naples-based label is to take such uncut stones and throw them together with a house production and session musician team, but this project is different (although, with the absolute keystone of that in-house approach Alessandro Del Vecchio recently parting company with the label after fourteen years perhaps the label did not have much choice…). The Nail (note the definitive article, and not to be confused with noughties Hardcore outfit Nails) is all about airing not one, but three such youngsters – Indian hot shot Girish Pradhan on vocals, plus brothers Efe (on guitars) and Reis Ali Eroglu (on pretty much everything else, plus most of the songwriting). Oh, and it’s produced by their dad, Cenk Eroglu. Maybe their mum did the catering too, but that’s not credited on the press release…
But you get the point – the usual Italian house team is not involved at all and that lends a different feel to the release, which for me is hugely positive, because in recent years that house style and team has lent too many releases a feeling of repetition when you have several of them coming across the review queue each month.
That leads me to the record itself. I’ve not come across any of the projects that this team has worked on previously and given that the multi-instrumentalist co-writer Reis Ali Eroglu is only seventeen, that’s perhaps not surprising. That’s why Frontiers previously de-risked such things by having safe in-house hands deliver the bulk of the work, but this family affair has their musical chemistry already pre-fermented, with frontman Pradhan being the one that has to fit into someone else’s groove. Which he does remarkably well…
The fact is the two things that work best here are Pradhan’s hugely entrancing performance and the moments of sheer shreddery from the elder of the Eroglu brothers, but unfortunately the writing is a little too by the numbers for me, with the rhythm section just really driving a straight edge complimentary backline, rather than feeling like a living, breathing band entity of more than one player on the backline. OK, I guess it’s almost impossible for anything in the safe and commercial end of the Hard Rock / Melodic Metal pond to sound truly original, but it can sound relevant and modern – in fact I would argue that it absolutely has to with so many potential substitute products in this crowded marketplace (especially when half of them probably come from the same label).
That said, this is not a bad album by any stretch, and one I could happily listen to throughout, but it does feel a little unfinished. That’s a direct consequence of having one musician, and a very inexperienced one at that wearing four of the six hats in the ring, but one easily fixed by bringing more players into the fold and sharing a bit. Promising, but a bit more polish needed on this particular rock is needed. 6/10
Stryper - When We Were Kings (Frontiers Music Srl) [Rich Piva]
Someone is still listening to Stryper. If not, then why would we have three new studio albums from the band since 2020? That is quite an impressive clip, so there has to be a fanbase out there for more of their hard rocking, Jesus loving, way over produced rock and roll. The latest record, When We Were Kings (I assume they are referring to 1986, but I could be wrong) is more of what the other ones from this decade and actually the past three or so decades have been with very little difference. Let me break it down for you if you don’t mind.
Overall, Tundra Rock takes the catchiness of Slomosa’s debut and marries it with atmosphere providing more ideas and outcomes than ever before. This is a fantastic follow-up but they still have potential and are far from done. Slomosa are my favourite Stoner Rock band and I feel like that this album provides a very good reason for that. 9/10
Torso - Brain Cells (APF Records) [Matt Bladen]
It came from London in 2022 after the demise of Possessor, Graham Bywater's visceral horror thrash machine Torso shrieked bloodily from the grave with A Crash Course In Terror. Dirty, raw riffs, howled vocals, B-movie samples and horror themes are all pure Torso, continuing where he left off at the death of Possessor.
Brain Cells is the follow up to the debut and Graham again attacks his guitar and rages at his mic with more gore soaked nastiness. A bubbling blend of KISS schlock worship, hardcore thrash and even dirgy grunge, Brain Cells is a short stab of gruesomeness, oppressive and ferocious, though there's also a heavy influence of Goblin or Morricone on their Italian horror era, especially on the title track, which also features vocals from Lisa Bywater.
You Belong In Hell kicks off with the lo-fi fuzz, grinding bass and drums haunts Blood Frenzy as there's a shifting break on the psychedelic Savage Magic before more riffs come. Brain Cells is the follow up you would want, it's darker, meaner and takes a few more risks. This Torso continues to have a heart that beats to the sound of a Dario Argento score. 9/10
The Nail - The Nail (Frontiers Music Srl) [Simon Black]
Another day, another Frontiers Records Srl mash-up… or is it?
To be fair, Frontiers Records have been getting rather better at the kind of projects that are all about introducing new, younger talent across different markets, rather than their staple of career resurrection / Supergroup projects for label main man Serafino Perugino’s nostalgia list of 80’s Hard Rock and Metal heroes. I cite the label’s success with the likes of James Durbin as a great example of this and point out that they do well at finding such diamonds in the rough, giving them a shot at a broader audience than they might achieve on their own.
The normal modello operativo for the Naples-based label is to take such uncut stones and throw them together with a house production and session musician team, but this project is different (although, with the absolute keystone of that in-house approach Alessandro Del Vecchio recently parting company with the label after fourteen years perhaps the label did not have much choice…). The Nail (note the definitive article, and not to be confused with noughties Hardcore outfit Nails) is all about airing not one, but three such youngsters – Indian hot shot Girish Pradhan on vocals, plus brothers Efe (on guitars) and Reis Ali Eroglu (on pretty much everything else, plus most of the songwriting). Oh, and it’s produced by their dad, Cenk Eroglu. Maybe their mum did the catering too, but that’s not credited on the press release…
But you get the point – the usual Italian house team is not involved at all and that lends a different feel to the release, which for me is hugely positive, because in recent years that house style and team has lent too many releases a feeling of repetition when you have several of them coming across the review queue each month.
That leads me to the record itself. I’ve not come across any of the projects that this team has worked on previously and given that the multi-instrumentalist co-writer Reis Ali Eroglu is only seventeen, that’s perhaps not surprising. That’s why Frontiers previously de-risked such things by having safe in-house hands deliver the bulk of the work, but this family affair has their musical chemistry already pre-fermented, with frontman Pradhan being the one that has to fit into someone else’s groove. Which he does remarkably well…
The fact is the two things that work best here are Pradhan’s hugely entrancing performance and the moments of sheer shreddery from the elder of the Eroglu brothers, but unfortunately the writing is a little too by the numbers for me, with the rhythm section just really driving a straight edge complimentary backline, rather than feeling like a living, breathing band entity of more than one player on the backline. OK, I guess it’s almost impossible for anything in the safe and commercial end of the Hard Rock / Melodic Metal pond to sound truly original, but it can sound relevant and modern – in fact I would argue that it absolutely has to with so many potential substitute products in this crowded marketplace (especially when half of them probably come from the same label).
That said, this is not a bad album by any stretch, and one I could happily listen to throughout, but it does feel a little unfinished. That’s a direct consequence of having one musician, and a very inexperienced one at that wearing four of the six hats in the ring, but one easily fixed by bringing more players into the fold and sharing a bit. Promising, but a bit more polish needed on this particular rock is needed. 6/10
Stryper - When We Were Kings (Frontiers Music Srl) [Rich Piva]
Someone is still listening to Stryper. If not, then why would we have three new studio albums from the band since 2020? That is quite an impressive clip, so there has to be a fanbase out there for more of their hard rocking, Jesus loving, way over produced rock and roll. The latest record, When We Were Kings (I assume they are referring to 1986, but I could be wrong) is more of what the other ones from this decade and actually the past three or so decades have been with very little difference. Let me break it down for you if you don’t mind.
First, these songs sound like the Stryper of the past 20 or so years. I am not sure if even the biggest fan could tell the difference between the songs on the last few albums. Second, the band actually sounds great and still has in musically. Oz Fox has been through a lot medically but, assuming he did most of the guitar work on here, still can shred. Third, people either love or hate Michael Sweet’s voice, but one thing is for sure is that outside of some potential studio wizardry (see point four) his voice still sounds huge. Fourth, this is on Frontiers, so it is immediately confirmed that it is way overproduced. Fifth, the band is leaning on in “heavy”, as Stryper continues to bring the more aggressive side, for them at least. Sixth, you are going to have to deal with Jesus songs.
So that being said, if you like Stryper, you will like When We Were Kings. The highlights include the opening rockers End Of Days that really gives Oz a chance to shine and he takes it on perfectly, Unforgivable, which has a nice chunky riff and more great playing by Oz, and Raptured that has a hair metal via heavy blues rocking riff and more of Sweet being Sweet. The band is best these days when really rocking out, so songs like Betrayed By Love and Grateful I could do without, but there are no really bad tracks on When We Are Kings, which is saying a lot for many Frontiers releases.
So that being said, if you like Stryper, you will like When We Were Kings. The highlights include the opening rockers End Of Days that really gives Oz a chance to shine and he takes it on perfectly, Unforgivable, which has a nice chunky riff and more great playing by Oz, and Raptured that has a hair metal via heavy blues rocking riff and more of Sweet being Sweet. The band is best these days when really rocking out, so songs like Betrayed By Love and Grateful I could do without, but there are no really bad tracks on When We Are Kings, which is saying a lot for many Frontiers releases.
The slickness will always get to me production-wise and there is only so much Jebus stuff I can take in my rock, but overall, this is a pretty solid release from a band who has been doing this for a very, very long time and have been counted out as many times as they have been praised. Good for them, and When We Were Kings is good for Stryper fans. 6/10
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