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Review & Full Album Premiere: Slomosa, Slomosa

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[Click play above to stream Slomosa’s self-titled debut in full. It’s out Friday, Aug. 28 on Apollon Records.]

Slomosa may be newcomers, but their sound draws on decades of established heavy rock traditions that are nothing if not stalwart. Based in Bergen, Norway, and releasing their self-titled debut full-length through Apollon Records, the four-piece formed in 2017, recorded in 2018 and traded out half their lineup in 2019, bringing in guitarist Tor Erik Bye and bassist Marie Moe alongside drummer Severin Sandvik and vocalist/guitarist Benjamin Berdous. Starting last Fall, Slomosa began issuing singles from the eight-song/37-minute recorded-live-with-overdubs offering, beginning with the rolling riff that starts the album in “Horses” before following-up with “There is Nothing New Under the Sun” (posted here) and, most recently, “In My Mind’s Desert” (posted here) giving a different look at the breadth of their more than capably conveyed melody. Helmed and mixed by Eirik Sandvik (Amped OutHowlin’ Sun) and mastered by Enslaved‘s own Iver Sandøy, the album benefits from the experienced hands of its production (the band is listed as a co-producer), bringing due tonal presence to a style that is well aware of genre tenets and speaking alike to the formative days of Californian desert rock in the 1990s and the Scandinavian interpretations that followed soon behind.

Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age are two anchor influences, the former coming into play throughout, in songs like “Kevin” and “Estonia” and even “Scavengers,” which hints at more progressive nuance in the guitar twists of its second half, but remains grounded ultimately in its structure and staves off digging too far into such indulgences. The latter manifests perhaps even more palpably in the vocal patterning and riffing style of Berdous and then-guitarist Anders RørlienKristian Tvedt played bass — and comes to the fore in “In My Mind’s Desert” and “Just to Be,” both of which specifically key in on the Josh Homme-fronted outfit’s 1998 self-titled debut.

Along with this, the driving thrust of “There is Nothing New Under the Sun” seems to harness the intensity that Dozer once brought to the desert sound, and the march of “Horses” at the launch of the record feels derived more from the earliest work of The Sword — who, it should be noted, are from neither California nor Sweden — so there’s more to dig into throughout Slomosa‘s Slomosa than it might at first appear. And while still definitively a desert rock aesthetic — they call it “tundra rock” in honor of Norway’s lack of deserts; you work with what you’ve got — one of the most encouraging aspects of the collection, especially taken in its manageable entirety, is how much Slomosa are able to bring these influences along to suit the purposes of their own songwriting. Ultimately, it is that songwriting that rules the day.

It might take a given listener a turn or two through Slomosa to get past the novelty of picking out riffs and saying, “Oh, that’s this Kyuss track,” be it “Estonia” drawing from “Supa Scoopa and Mighty Scoop” or whatever else, but the rewards are ample for that minimal investment of effort, and they come in form of hooks like those of “Horses” or “There is Nothing New Under the Sun” or “Just to Be,” as well as the more willfully sprawling showcase that is closer “On and Beyond.” The last of those is a singular worthy showcase of the band’s potential, but the truth of the matter is that same potential is writ large across the entirety of the release.

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Their songs work well together and are placed smoothly for an overarching full-length flow, but it is no coincidence that they spaced out three singles ahead of the full album’s arrival, since that is very much the modus in which the record operates: as a presentation of the individual tracks that comprise it. Each song is crisp and smoothly executed — not so smooth as to detract from the weight or edge, but enough to highlight the melody in Berdous‘ vocals for sure. As “In My Mind’s Desert” taps those nascent Queens of the Stone Age vibes (or is it a less melancholy “I Never Came?”), even the word-playfulness of the lyrics seems to be on board in the line, “No man’s an island in no man’s land.” But even here, there’s more happening than simply deriving new material from something built before.

Certainly there’s plenty of that, and you won’t hear me say otherwise — I don’t imagine even Slomosa themselves would come out and say they’ve completely invented a new sound; beware of anyone who does — but the energy and the vitality behind what they’re doing stylistically is an asset that comes into play all along the album’s varied path. Recording at least the basic tracks live would seem to have been a correct choice in that regard, since that natural foundation resonates even through whatever overdubbing and the added-later vocals. It becomes an essential aspect of each track, as heard in the fuzz-forward “Scavengers,” which hits into a bounce and push that would seem to be positioning itself as an heir to Truckfighters‘ unmitigated sense of fun, or in “There is Nothing New Under the Sun,” which in addition to Dozer directly and perhaps with tongue-in-cheek recalls “My God is the Sun” from QOTSA‘s …Like Clockwork, as well as anywhere else one might have ears to hear it. Slomosa sound like a young band. A young band who know what they want stylistically and are able to craft their material in such a way as to manifest that.

Such things don’t come along every day, and if you’re looking for theses in Slomosa, they’re readily apparent in “There is Nothing New Under the Sun” and “In My Mind’s Desert” — two cuts that seem to find the band directly acknowledging where they’re coming from in terms of overall perspective. An act of that kind of boldness isn’t to be taken lightly, especially from a new group releasing their first album. What remains to be seen is how Slomosa‘s lineup change will affect their sound, and what lessons they’ll take with them from having successfully executed this offering at the high level they have. Will they push outward as “On and Beyond” seems to want to do, or dive deeper into the thrust of “Kevin,” or head somewhere else entirely? Part of what makes Slomosa so exciting as an album is not knowing the answer, but only part, because the work they’ve done in these songs is more than enough to stand on its own, regardless of what might come after.

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