Valley of the Sun
Electric Talons of the Thunderhawk

Into the valley of the sun then, a valley where the sun shines bright over the electric talons of the native Thunderhawk a bird which shriek creates thunder from clear skies. Not a pleasant place for the less experienced hiker one would believe, or am I just writing complete nonsense? Well a trio of americans are the ones behind this name and due to a silly title of the debut album I cannot help but feeling less than excited about introducing their album. Still it is not the dull cover of the book that is the important thing, it is what we found on the pages beneath that cover.

So what do we find? Well, we find stoner rock. There isn’t really anything more to add to that if I am honest. Take the three similar bands, they are just copy-pasted from what I have read about the album, you could add any stoner rock band of choice at that position. It isn’t the most varied of genres. The album boasts a modern and very good production, that is a strong point of this album. The variation over the ten tracks is not as strong and plays of just short of 45 minutes. I think it sounds like a very solid debut album.

And it is a solid album. It has the classic stoner power and rawness and vocalist. I find this album somewhat lacking though, it lacks a bit of character and freshness and has nothing that really grabs me. It is solid, the tracks are decent but nothing stands out and nothing really grabs me here. I have several times thought about giving this album a rating of three just because of this lack of interesting angles but it is just too good for that. Thing is though that it is too bad for anything but our middle rating either, just one of those albums.

This is a difficult review as I don’t really have much to say about the album other than yada, yada, yada, bla, bla, bla, a decent album and all of that stuff but there is nothing to really focus on for me. Then again, I am not that big a fan of stoner rock so maybe I am not the targeted audience of this band and this album. A decent album, and I think that if you are a fan of the genre you ought to have a look at this album. More than that isn’t really needed to say.

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