A band previously described as having “vim and verve”, Herfordshire’s The Lunar Effect play a brand of stoner and desert rock that so often has a definite American sound. Taking bits of Kyuss, Trouble, Sun Voyager and the obligatory seasoning of Sabbath, their work is riff heavy, but often tempered by a welcome spaciousness giving proceedings a slightly trippy nature. Following their 2014 home recorded EP, for 2016’s ‘Strange Lands’, Jon Jefford (vox/g) and Daniel Jefford (d) now find themselves as part of a full band and with a slightly bigger recording budget. This gives their first full length release more scope than they ever had before.
Tag Archives: stoner
HOBO MAGIC – Hobo Magic
From Brisbane comes classic metal/stoner metal band Hobo Magic; a band deep into the sounds of early Sabbath and more than ready to shake their audience with a rather fierce bottom end. There are hundreds of bands out there churning out post-Kyuss riffage, of course…so many, in fact, that it’s easy for many of them to be overlooked, or indeed, lost in the noise. Fans of the style should make a special pilgrimage through the realms of the internet’s countless stoner bands to find Hobo Magic, for musically, they have something special that really sets them apart.
1968 – 1968 EP
1967’s supposed summer of love and its psychedelic, swirling colourful world was never going to last forever. 1968, by contrast, was darker and less flamboyant, a time of unrest. Students rioted in Paris, while the psychedelic pop of yesteryear was beginning to wane in favour of harder stuff. Often abreast of the mood of the pop-culture sphere, we only have to look at The Beatles output from this time to get a brief glimpse of the general changes in attitude. In a short time, they’d gone from lush, complex pop to a starker and altogether colder musical mood, a good chunk of the fourth side of their sprawling double set from 1968 devoted to near-impenetrable tape loops and cut-ups. Hendrix, too, had experimented with denser sounds on ‘Electric Ladyland’ than either of his previous two albums, while The Doors’ general circus of dystopia was at its peak. 1968 was arguably the year when pop begat hard rock. Fitting, then, with a whole arsenal of retro sounds at their disposal, that this trio from Cheshire should choose “1968” as their band name. Their sounds look backwards a time when the blues came with a mass of distortion and the world-changing Black Sabbath were lurking just over the horizon.
BLACK LUNA – Death Alley
Comprising ex-members of The Venus Flytrap, Black Luna is a three piece band who bill their music as “heavy lo-fi psychedelic garage”. That just about covers it, since their debut album 2015’s ‘Death Alley’ is all those things…and more. Often coming across like a hybrid of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and stoner rockers Ruby The Hatchet dressed down with a production value befitting a shoegaze band, these eight tracks really capture a sense of raw energy within a rather succinct twenty eight minutes.
88 MILE TRIP – Through The Thickest Haze
Hearing the opening notes of this debut full-length LP from Canadian stoner rock band 88 Mile Trip has the unfortunate effect of making the listener want to turn off the disc in an instant. Frontman David Bell delivers the opening verse of ‘The Repressed’ a cappella style which, quite frankly, isn’t the best move. His huge voice has a natural tone, but much like hearing Glenn Danzig bellowing with no sense of occasion or restraint, in terms of over-singing, it’s incredibly overbearing. He wails through each word at full volume and really it’s not easy to listen to. Maybe the band wanted to make a statement and chose such uncompromising beginnings deliberately, but there’s also every chance that Bell isn’t quite the vocalist he aspires to being.