The Black Explosion
Servitors of the Outer Gods

Looking at the cover artwork I come to think of the old fifties and sixties sci-fi movies where aliens invade our little insignificant blue planet in a little insignificant solar system in a little insignificant galaxy, kind of like the classic War of the World movie which was remade recently. It was a good movie that remake and the cover art of this album is quite excellent to be honest. So that thing is quite impressive, the band arose when Chris Winter decided to form a new project after his former band Dollhouse was disbanded. This quartet are now releasing this astounding rock adventure called Servitors of the Outer Gods and the namedropping points towards a time fifty years ago, but is it like a time machine to when Led Zeppelin was breaking new musical ground, when Black Sabbath wasn’t in wheelchairs and when The Who were young and the Rolling Stones wasn’t fossils, or is it just a copy of that time made to today’s standard? that my friend is the right question.

The answer by the way, is 42.

It is a bit of both, it sounds authentic sixties hard rockish with the high pitched raw vocals that many bands had at that time, it is also that kind of guitar sound that was commonplace back then in the rock music, it sounds kind of like it was recorded in 68 and then forgotten, until now. It is just that it doesn’t quite but it is some psychedelic stuff here as well and one could start counting bands like saying it sounds like a bit of Black Sabbath meets Led Zeppelin with Robert Plant as a vocalist but that is not something that we do. I said however that it is not quite like it, it lacks the real grit of that time and it sounds a little like a more polished and childproofed version of the music of that time. The playing time is also authentic with vinyl friendly 36 minutes on the ten tracks, a decent amount of variation of this theme is also to be found here.

This album and this band for sure feels more like a valid presence than shitty bands like Bullet of Bonafide and their album in difference to that crap is also quite good, and it can be said to be an enjoyable debut album. But there is a bit of a but, for me this feels a bit unnecessary as the sixties have already come and gone a long time ago and I see no reason to revive such a time as it had its goings some fifty years ago now. And are we also to revive the cold war, the Cuban missile crisis, the space race and all of those things? I don’t think so and I am not really sure a slightly polished version of that kind of music is what floats my boat. I think the album cover is the best thing.

In the end I would say that if you enjoy music of times long gone and thinks times were better when everyone was driving cars that ran on twice as much fuel as today, and when everyone was afraid because of the threat of nuclear war between the americans and the russians, and when the sound of records was a fair bit worse than this. Lets say that if you have a romantic view of how good everything was fifty years ago, despite it not being that, you will probably adore this album, me on the other hand prefer my music a bit more modern. So for you living in the distant past, here you have a new album to sink your teeth into.