Mexican stoner metal. Don’t say there’s not a single genre we leave undisturbed here at Sentinel Daily; we fear no riff, and what’s more we love most of it – and that certainly goes for this nifty little album from Electric Mountain.
Actually desert rock is probably a more apposite term for what’s going on here, albeit desert rock given a supercharged kick in the vitals via the superb guitar playing of Gibran, who also supplies vocals to the mix.
It’s rare to hear a ‘home made’ record that sounds so good, even in these days of protools and deluxe bedroom recording facilities; The production of Electric Mountain is damn near perfect, allowing each instrument – including the bass, so often a poor relation in the budget recording environment – to crush the life out of the listener in unforgiving and relentless style.
Those of you who follow Ferrum Templor’s Crusade of Power will already be familiar with this outfit as he features them in this month’s column, but for the rest of you let me add a bit of colour to the bare bones already supplied; Electric Mountain – that’s Gibran, backed up by drummer Max and wielder of the four string motherfucker JB – deal in sludged-up, fuzzed out rifferama… and lots of it. Their self titled album may only be a shade over thirty minutes long but my word it fits in a lot in that time, from out-and-out desert delights like Space Rocket and the instrumental Dune to punkier, more urgent fragmentary explosions like the frankly superb album closer Heavy Stone. This last named track is low-slung menace at it’s very best, and you need music like this in your collection to remind you just how vital a blast of elemental rock n’roll can be from time to time.
At the other end of the album opener Free Woman is about as adamantine as hard rock gets, stentorian riffage given life by snake hipped rhythm section intervention, the result being a headbanging paean to the fairer rockin’ sex of rare vintage; But anywhere you drop the needle you’re guaranteed good times and hard rock jollies a plenty, so head over to the band’s bandcamp page and get involved… Tell them Sentinel Daily sent yas all…
Electric Mountain is out now.
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