A while ago I bought this album at a disappointing Doom Metal Festival. And I loved it immediately! El Thule from Italy make some damn fine Stoner Rock. Good tunes for a smoke. Have Fun!
This is my first meeting with Italy's EL-THULE, and it's their second album which has been released this time as a joint venture between Riff Records and Go Down Records in 2007. 'Green Magic' is a heavy and relentles monster of an album, where the fuzzed-out blues of early Blue Cheer collides with the merciless whirlwind drumming of High On Fire. Well, not all of the here included songs follow this patterns, but especially the first two songs 'Shaman' (featuring Pippo Del Palma of Alix on didjeridoo) and 'La Cruda' are very close to that description. Del Palma isn't the only guest musician here and there's also Tommi Holappa of Dozer, who is playing with the band on the last track 'Lunar V' as well as Paolo Tofani, ex-guitarist of Italians progsters Area, who's responsible for the atmospheric intro on the same song. Drummer Gweedo Weedo offers an onslaught of power, ideas and seething white-hot energy on this opener, pushing his two band mates to a visceral peak. In the further course of this album, EL-THULE prove more than only once that they have the abilities to integrate some musical surprises in form of untypical arrangements which break the boundaries of bluesy rock 'n' roll. The result is always refreshing and entertaining, so that one will discover more details within the songs after every new spin. EL-THULE have created an unstoppable gut-wrenching rollercoaster of riffs and this album shows, that it's still possible to add new ideas to the musical vision which was born with they debut album of Blue Cheer. Only the vocals of guitarist Mr.Action are sounding a little bit too weak in contrast to the amount of shredding riffs he unleashes together with bassist El Commandate, but maybe you'll like 'em more than I do. This furious album has been mixed and mastered at the Bombshelter Studio in Sweden, what means that you can expect a heavy and monstrous sound. 'Green Magic' isn't quite a classic, but a consistently decent album that is strong enough to stand apart of the amount of same sounding heavy rock bands. Thumbs up for EL-THULE! Please notic that the deluxe vinyl-version has been released on Heavy Birth Records.
(From Cosmic Lava)
1 comment:
... and when seen alive, El-Thule are even better! Great post, thanks!
Post a Comment