Vocals Haven’t Found Their Fit Yet
Coming to us from Paris, France, Blaak Heat Shujaa has released their EP The Storm Generation, in preparation for a full length coming out next year and it provides a great taste of what we can expect. Recorded by stoner rock bassist extraordinaire Scott Reeder (Kyuss, the Obsessed), there was no way this album wouldn’t be full of awesome riffs and a great desert rock groove, and Blaak Heat Shujaa has the talent to keep up. Pulling from multiple genres that are not often enough put together, this album sticks out as something new and original, and is hopefully indicative of continued grooviness in the full-length.
The Storm Generation starts out with one of the two extended tracks, “The Revenge of the Feathered Pheasant,” which begins with a great grooving bass line that is soon joined by spacey guitar and a driving drum beat that continues for 11 minutes of total heaviness. The only weak part of the track, and really the album, is the vocals. They feel out of place and don’t necessarily fit with the instrumentals, other than in the song “Helios,” where Thomas Bellier finds a lower range that matches the heaviness of the music much more. The two standout tracks that are “Incident At Stinson Beach” and “The Storm,” both of which are short and catchy instrumental pieces that perfectly combine surf, psych, stoner, and desert rock with the Middle Eastern sounding scales that makes this record stick out among so many other bands trying to do similar things.
All in all, this album would be much stronger if it were purely instrumental, but the vocals may easily find their fit in the anticipated full-length, and the shorter instrumental tracks that are interspersed throughout balance it quite well. This EP is a great fit for fans of older psychedelic music as well as desert and space influenced stoner rock, especially fans of Kyuss, who may be looking for a soundtrack to try and warm up during the next few cold months.
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