SLOWER – Slower

Slower. As the name implies, this band is all about the doom. However, this is doom with a twist. Bringing together members of Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Kylesa, Year of The Cobra and others, the performers are famous in their own right, but nowhere near as famous as Slower’s choice of material. This debut album features five Slayer classics, each one drastically reimagined as a timeless doom/sludge piece; five numbers that end up invariably sounding like more like Acid King than Kerry King. It seems inconceivable that speed driven bangers that sound tracked a generation’s metallic apocalypse could take on the stance of Electric Wizard and Witch Mountain, but behind their comical name, Slower have made such things a striking reality.

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ROBERT REX WALLER, Jr. – See The Big Man Cry

In 2016, Robert Rex Waller released his solo debut ‘Fancy Free’. On that record, the sometime collaborator with I See Hawks In L.A. put his own stamp on a well curated selection of cover tunes, often with mixed results. Great versions of Neil Young’s often overlooked ‘Albuquerque’ and Dylan’s ‘She Belongs To Me’ gave the album an easily approachable core, whilst a drastically reworked version of The Doors’ ‘Crystal Ship’ showed how Waller was unafraid of rebuilding material from the ground up. Even when the material that wasn’t quite as interesting, showed off a man with a rich voice. The album certainly could have done without the misjudged version of ‘Waterloo Sunset’, but the good often outweighed the bad.

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THE BEATERSBAND – Vol. Tre

Italian punk ‘n’ roll outfit Beatersband began cranking out good time sounds in 2018. Although they spent a couple of their early years hampered by a pandemic lockdown in terms of reaching live audiences, they more than made up for that with a prolific output. By the end of 2022, their comprises three albums, several singles and a brilliant cassette (‘Un Tuffo Nel Passatto’) which supplies the ultimate crash course in their work to date.

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RONNIE ROMERO – Raised On Heavy Radio

For his first solo album, Chilean vocalist Ronnie Romero took the easy route and put together a covers album. To be fair, it’s not like he had anything to prove; in the year before its recording, he’d already recorded well-received albums with both Lords of Black and The Ferrymen. He wasn’t about to spend much time coasting along recycling other peoples’ classic rock works either, since he then released an album with his other band Sunstorm, which hit the shelves barely four months later.

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THE PROG COLLECTIVE – Songs We Were Taught

Although often billed as the world’s biggest prog rock supergroup, The Prog Collective is actually more of a revolving gang of musicians. Working with an incredibly fluid line up, it’s merely an umbrella name that allows multi-instrumentalist Billy Sherwood to call on various friends according to their appropriate talents. If this sounds like a similar set up to one of Sherwood’s many tribute albums, it’s with very good reason. The Prog Collective’s main difference – at least on their first two albums – came from the idea that the gathering of talent would record original material. It’s also clear that Sherwood believed, perhaps correctly, that the mystique of a “prog supergroup” would attract more listeners than one of his many solo projects.

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