Gypdy Chief Goliath
Citizens of Nowhere

The Gypsy Chief is back with a new album, their third album since the debut that was released in 2012. I have actually listened to all the albums by this band and come to the conclusion that so far they have done the same thing three times over. And another thing is that they have no real taste in cover artwork as their entire catalogue of albums had poor artworks to say the least. Furthermore I have always thought their production has sounded a bit dated and now they have gone all analogue to try and make it sound even more dated. As much as I admire and respect the skills in doing stuff the old fashioned way, I just don’t think it is the way to work today if you want to accomplish the best possible result. Equipment evolve and get better, so why go down a route that is mostly abandoned these days when the difference cannot even be heard on the equipment most people play the music on anyway?

To me this album has a production that sounds rather dated, of course I am not playing it on vinyl so I cannot get the whole quality of it as the MP3s provided as promo material are quite far from the best possible quality of the recordings. Nevertheless, the general sound is still more like something from the seventies than something recorded today. The music itself is bluesy stoner rock/or stoner metal – nothing really special in that regard. And speaking of things less than good, the vocals are terrible on this album just as they have been on all other albums by this band. The fact is that despite this album having gone completely analogue I think it sounds exactly like the albums before so maybe the details are lost in the quality of the music files but how many people do you think listen to vinyl records these days? And on spotify it will sound even worse than the promo files – so exactly like before in other words.

It is heavy and has a nice groove to it, I really like the groove and the heaviness of the album – it is a great album to have as background music. It is not as interesting to just listen to, the songs are okay and the album in general is quite good. But it never really takes off and I believe that only those really into the stoner stuff will find it really interesting. So it is not really an album that is really going to attract that much attention, it works okay but I think the poor vocals will scare away some listeners and the dated sound will scare away even more listeners. The remaining fans might like this but there is only one safe reason for anyone to get this album and that is if they liked the previous albums, as this one sounds the same.

Recommended to fans of the band and possibly fans of the genre. Otherwise I am quite sure that you will not really find much usage in this album. It is not bad, in fact it is quite good but there are so many albums that are a lot more interesting and better than this one and none of them sounds like a relic from the seventies. If I want something from the seventies why not just listen to something that was recorded then? However, I still think this album is too good to give a really poor rating so I think we can call this one approved.

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