Review & Full Album Premiere: Stoned Jesus, Pilgrims
[Click play above to stream Stoned Jesus’ Pilgrims in its entirety. Album is out Sept. 7 on Napalm Records.]
One thing about pilgrims: they travel. Ukrainian heavy rock ambassadors Stoned Jesus have done plenty likewise since the release of their third LP, 2015’s The Harvest (review here), as as they’ve stated their fourth and latest album, which is also their debut on Napalm Records, is inspired at least in part by their significant time spent touring, calling it Pilgrims only makes all the more sense. The Kiev-based trio of guitarist/vocalist Igor Sidorenko, bassist Serhij Sljussar and drummer Dmytro Zinchenko continue the band’s penchant for willful growth across the seven tracks/50 minutes, and as Stoned Jesus have always to this point managed to progress their sound from one outing to the next, sometimes in multiple directions, Pilgrims most certainly keeps that streak alive.
With a kick of an opening in “Excited” that speaks directly to the theme of playing live — the song feels penned to open sets — the album fleshes outward along noise rocking chug in “Thessalia,” Mellotron-caked Mike Pattonism in “Distant Light,” post-rocking airiness in the guitar and grunge underpinnings built to a weighted push in the nine-minute centerpiece “Feel” — which would also seem to be about touring life and the peculiar isolation thereof — and so on. This moves them into the back end as “Hands Resist Him” (video premiere here) adds melody to the noisy impulse of “Thessalia” and finds Sidorenko in particular command of his vocals, the lumbering riffage of “Water Me,” which is the longest inclusion at 9:30 and turns in its seventh minute to a fervent drive that leaves its central riff and seemingly the stratosphere behind, and the deceptively uptempo closer “Apathy,” which features a tense and swinging bassline at its core around which the guitar enacts a build into a midsection payoff before pulling back to open spaces to revive the repetitions of the hook that seem to be the only lyrics.
Impressively, they cover all this ground with a sense of flow from front-to-back. One couldn’t help but wonder if coming into Pilgrims, Stoned Jesus wouldn’t be affected by the large amount of touring they did in 2017 playing 2012’s Seven Thunders Roar (review here) in its entirety, if that album’s heavy psychedelic sprawl and fullness of tone wouldn’t bleed once again into their sound. Largely, it doesn’t. One could argue some of the spaciousness in Sidorenko‘s guitar in a longer cut like “Feel” is a commonality, but even that is a stretch, and his work in these songs alongside Slussar and Zinchenko — the latter making his first appearance with the band — carries a greater sense of urgency, even unto “Apathy,” which despite its disaffected title refuses to be pigeonholed in terms of style. What ties the tracks together, then, is the confidence in Stoned Jesus‘ delivery and the sheer sense of performance they bring to them. The band debuted in 2010 with First Communion, so they’re not a decade on from that, and yet Pilgrims finds them sounding like veterans; not exhausted, but sure of their approach and what they want their material to convey.
Their confidence — born in no small part, of course, from their time on stage — allows them to smoothly shift between stylistic elements as they do between “Excited” and “Thessalia,” or “Hands Resist Him” and the conceptual-feeling “Water Me,” and still carry the audience’s attention as well. That is, Pilgrims doesn’t embark on its progressive journey at the expense of engaging the listener. Indeed, “Excited” bleeds out its energy through the speaker as it careens into its second half, and while “Distant Light” is more patient in its delivery and touches on psychedelic atmospherics, in Zinchenko‘s drums there’s still that central current of gotta-go that even the Mellotron doesn’t want to chill all the way out. That this follows the bruiser riffing of “Thessalia” and that it leads to the extended “Feel,” with its storytelling lyrics early setting up a swirling payoff toward the end, epitomizes the broad scope Stoned Jesus feel comfortable enacting with their songwriting and the unifying coherence thereof. Pilgrims wouldn’t function if it weren’t well constructed. And that doesn’t always mean it pairs verses with catchy choruses, choruses with bridges, etc.
It means that its shifts make sense within its own context and, while songs like “Hands Resist Him” and “Distant Light” might not beat the audience over the head with their hooks — wouldn’t really be fair to say the same of “Apathy,” which, again, relies on the same lines repeated throughout — they are memorable nonetheless. That’s all the more to the credit of Stoned Jesus‘ craft, and that they so carefully balance their own need for creative growth with that is further demonstration of the crucial experience the last several years have wrought in their style. Make no mistake, Pilgrims is an album in the sense of conveying an expressive sensibility across its span and in terms of the basic sound of its production, but it’s also a collection of quality songs, each seeming to have its own standout moment or aspect to distinguish it from what surrounds. That was true of The Harvest as well, but the vibe on Pilgrims is more fluid, less angular, in its transitions and the difference is palpable when taking on the record as a whole.
If anything, Pilgrims makes it clear that Stoned Jesus haven’t misspent the last several years. Especially as their first offering with the wider reach of Napalm behind it, the album benefits on every level — theme, craft, delivery — from the road-time the band undertook. There’s a sense of arrival about it, especially as it seems to balance various sonic elements from their past work while making something new from that combination, but the fact of the three-piece remains that they’ve never put out the same record twice and that one of the greatest strengths in what they do is its purposeful individualism. Stoned Jesus do not want to be confined by style or expectation or, seemingly, any other standard one might apply. The creative journey on which they’ve embarked is one that leads them forward ever closer to the heart of their own sound. However, that too is a moving target — and not just in the time-for-the-next-gig sense — and one carries little doubt Stoned Jesus‘ next long-player will leave Pilgrims to its moment, which is now. It is to be enjoyed while it lasts.
Stoned Jesus, “Hands Resist Him” official video
Stoned Jesus on Thee Facebooks
Napalm Records on Thee Facebooks
Tags: Kiev, Napalm Records, Pilgrims, Stoned Jesus, Stoned Jesus Pilgrims, Ukraine
