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Album Review: Black Rainbows, Cosmic Ritual Supertrip

Posted in Reviews on May 26th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

black rainbows Cosmic Ritual Supertrip

This is a band who know what works. Some 13 years on from their debut album, Twilight in the Desert, and working as a flagship act for frontman Gabriele Fiori‘s Heavy Psych Sounds label as well as spearheads of Italy’s jam-packed underground, Roman trio Black Rainbows have every sense of who they are as a unit and where they want to be in terms of their sound. And even as Fiori has split his focus with the label, a festival series of the same name, and with other projects like Killer Boogie and The Pilgrim, the mission of Black Rainbows has remained consistent: To embody the sound of riding a motorcycle made of fuzz riffs through space on a desert interstate to hell.

Cosmic Ritual Supertrip is the seventh or eighth Black Rainbows full-length depending on how you count, and like 2018’s Pandaemonium (review here), it was recorded with Fabio Sforza. Tracked over a period of three days at Forward Studios in Rome, it finds Fiori as the lone remaining original member of the band joined by the rhythm section of returning drummer Filippo Ragazzoni and newcomer bassist Edoardo “Mancio” Mancini, who steps in for Giuseppe Guglielmino. The shifts in lineup around Fiori aren’t necessarily anything new for Black Rainbows, and as noted, who’s where around him ultimately factors little into the band’s purpose. That’s not to take away from anyone else’s personality or playing style — there are certainly changes in the band’s dynamic that have emerged over time as well as an evolution of songwriting that hits its high water mark here — but there’s little question whose band Black Rainbows is.

Past efforts from Black Rainbows have pounded away through space rock, psychedelia, classic stoner idolatry — Nebula have always been a crucial influence — and jammy freakouts, and Cosmic Ritual Supertrip brings a mix of all of the above, but mostly what comes through the 12-track/49-minute long-player (the vinyl leaves off two songs) is the underlying strength of craft. FioriRagazzoni and Mancini weave and wind their way through these varying styles and elements, working at a range of tempos within and between songs, but whether it’s the scorching layered soloing at the apex of “Hypnotized by the Solenoid” or the pure stoner-is-as-stoner-does-ism of the earlier “Radio 666,” there is a distinct energy and vitality to the work that is singularly Black Rainbows‘ own.

The album practically starts at a sprint with “At Midnight You Cry” and even a subdued moment like the two-minute drifter “The Great Design” is followed up by “Master Rocket Power Blast,” which — if it even needs to be said — hits like it’s been huffing paint thinner for three weeks straight and decided now was a good time to try skydiving. What’s come to the fore over time in Black Rainbows‘ let-it-fly-off-the-rails approach, however, is just how much it actually doesn’t fly off those rails. It was true to an extent on Pandaemonium and 2016’s Stellar Prophecy (review here) and 2015’s Hawkdope (review here) as well, but never more than it is now, that there is a plan being followed in the material. The title Cosmic Ritual Supertrip sounds like pure druggy nonsense, but that’s the idea too. The record, the band, and the songs — they’re all supposed to be the vehicle of the pure, out-of-your-mind escapism that is relishing volume, weight, and presence in heavy music. The medium is the message.

black rainbows

Where Black Rainbows bring a shift in approach into play is the focus on songs. Cosmic Ritual Supertrip flows suitably as a full-length release — the vinyl edition drops the last two tracks of the CD, “Searching for Satellites I & II” and “Fire Breather,” bringing the runtime to about 40 minutes even — but it’s the manner on which individual tracks stand out that would seem to distinguish this latest work from its recent predecessors. A normally hard-touring unit, Black Rainbows are no strangers to engaging an audience, and whether it’s the initial salvo of “At Midnight You Cry,” the desert-rolling “Universal Phase,” “Radio 666” and the hotshot swing of “Isolation” ahead of “Hypnotized by the Solenoid,” or later pieces like the lead-and-crash-soaked “Snowball,” “Glittereyzed” with its mashed-together space and gallop impulses, or the almost chunky-style turns of “Sacred Graal” — Deliverance-era C.O.C. come to mind — there’s a sense that even when Cosmic Ritual Supertrip is at its most sonically sprawling, the songs aren’t wasting a second of their time or yours.

I don’t know if it’s right to call it urgency, though it can be intense at times and Black Rainbows have bordered on speed-rocking mania in the past, but these songs maintain the electric current so key to the band’s collective persona even as they feel particularly hammered out and worked through. They’re not overthought, but it’s as though Fiori and company went into the process of making Cosmic Ritual Supertrip with the goal of having the individual tracks each do as much work as possible. And they do, from front to back. Be it the sharp turns from “Hypnotized by the Solenoid” into “The Great Design” into “Master Rocket Power Blast” or the Monster Magnet-y keys and effects laced throughout “Searching for Satellites I & II” or the samples from 1957’s The Giant Claw about seeing a giant bird as a harbinger of death in “Fire Breather” as the band conjure one last rush, each piece finds a way to leave an impression, and because of that, the album as a whole does as well.

It’s not a case where Black Rainbows have undergone a radical shift in approach. Their sound will be easily recognizable for anyone who took on Pandaemonium, etc., but Cosmic Ritual Supertrip proves their mastery of their approach on a new level by seeing them use songwriting in a different way. They’ve released collections of songs before, and they’ve released albums that have cohered like single long-form works as well, but never quite with as much purpose behind doing so as Cosmic Ritual Supertrip has in how it gives each inclusion its moment in the spotlight. As Black Rainbows continue through this stage of their maturity — and 13 years and seven or eight records on, “maturity” seems like a fair word — that they’re still working in different modes of expression as a unit, and seeming to control it more than ever before, could hardly be more encouraging. The possibilities become endless.

Black Rainbows, Cosmic Ritual Supertrip (2020)

Black Rainbows website

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Black Rainbows Announce European Tour Dates

Posted in Whathaveyou on March 3rd, 2020 by JJ Koczan

black rainbows

Inevitable. As Black Rainbows move toward the May 1 release date for their new album, Cosmic Ritual Supertrip, they were more or less bound to announce a round of European touring to support. They’ll of course play the Heavy Psych Sounds Fests in Paris, London, the Netherlands and Belgium, and they’ll do Desertfest in Berlin (they still have room in the schedule for London as well) and a bunch of other festivals along the way between this week and the end of June, as well as shows later this Spring alongside such luminaries as Greenleaf and Elder, which, as ever, is fine company to keep.

I’ve heard Cosmic Ritual Supertrip at this point. Sooner or later I’ll review it — hopefully before May — but if I can bottom line it for you, these guys have taken space rock and classic ’90s-style stoner and made it their own thing. The Nebula/Fu Manchu influence that drove their earlier days is still there, but it’s morphed into a personality that’s more theirs than ever. I’ll leave it there for now, but they’ve worked diligently and you can hear that in the quality of their material and how they’ve moved forward as songwriters and performers. Eight records in they’re still pushing hard. That’s a good fucking band.

Tour dates follow:

black rainbows euro tour

BLACK RAINBOWS – EUROPEAN TOUR 2020

Black Rainbows are ready to release this spring their 8th album: “Cosmic Ritual Supertrip”. The new album been recorded at Forward Studios in Rome on an incredible Neve consolle recorded and mixed by Fabio Sforza same engineer of the last album “Pandaemonium.” The new beast has a monolithic force: guitars, drums, bass are all glued together and give the listener a punch on his face!

This album has a magic power mixing together the 70’s attitude with the doom-occult sound and the stoner rock in a masterful way.

*** BLACK RAINBOWS – EUROPEAN TOUR 2020 ***
A lot of headlining shows but also great festivals such as Heavy Psych Sounds Fests in Paris, London, Antwerp, Deventer and Winterthur !!!

05.03.2020 FR Paris – Glazart HPS Fest
06.03.2020 BE Antwerp – Trix HPS Fest
07.03.2020 UK London – Underworld HPS Fest
08.03.2020 NL Deveneter – Burgerweeshuis HPS Fest
25.04.2020 DE Dortmund – Check Your Head Fest
26.04.2020 DE Oldenburg – MTS
27.04.2020 DE Hamburg – Stubnitz
28.04.2020 PL Wroclaw – Dk Luksus
29.04.2020 PL Poznan – Alternativa
30.04.2020 DE Dresden
01.05.2020 DE Leipzig – Zoro
02.05.2020 DE Berlin – DesertFest
06.05.2020 DE Koln-MTC
07.05.2020 BE Bruxelles – Le Nuis Botanique Fest
08.05.2020 FR TBA
09.05.2020 FR TBA
14.05.2020 CH Olten-TBA
15.05.2020 CH Martigny – Caves Du Manoir w/Monkey3
16.05.2020 CH Altdorf – Vogelsang
17.05.2020 AT Salzburg – Rockhouse w/Greenleaf
06.06.2020 CH Winterthur – Gaswerk HPS Fest w/Elder
25.06.2020 DE Munich – Backstage
26.06.2020 DE Passau – Blackdoor Fest

BLACK RAINBOWS is:
Gabriele Fiori – Guitar/Vocals
Filippo Ragazzoni – Drums
Edoardo “Mancio” Mancini – Bass

http://www.theblackrainbows.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BLACKRAINBOWSROCK/
http://blackrainbows.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/HEAVYPSYCHSOUNDS/
http://www.heavypsychsounds.com/
https://heavypsychsoundsrecords.bandcamp.com/

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Black Rainbows: New LP Cosmic Ritual Supertrip Available to Preorder; Streaming “Isolation”

Posted in Whathaveyou on February 13th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

black rainbows

Italian heavy psychedelic rock magnates Black Rainbows return May 1 with their eighth full-length, Cosmic Ritual Supertrip, from which they’re streaming the first single and for which they’re taking preorders both as of today.

Perhaps the most striking thing about “Isolation,” which is serving as the lead track unveiled, is that an opening riff so killer isn’t how the bands chose to actually start the record. I’d be on board with checking it out anyhow, most likely — eight records deep, and I haven’t heard this one yet, but they don’t have a bummer in the bunch preceding — but I’m all the more interested in knowing how it actually leads off if not with something as awesome as this.

Expect more to come ahead of the release in May. Only reason I haven’t yet sent the label an email asking to set up a premiere is because I can’t actually get to my laptop at the moment to do such a thing. In any case, I will shortly and keep my fingers crossed at the possibility.

Fresh off the PR wire:

black rainbows Cosmic Ritual Supertrip

BLACK RAINBOWS – Cosmic Ritual Supertrip

Today we are extremely proud to start the presale of the BLACK RAINBOWS brand new album COSMIC RITUAL SUPERTRIP !!!

Black Rainbows are back with a brand new album! This time they are delivering 12 new and fresh tunes. Recorded and produced by Fabio Sforza, who was also behind the previous album Pandaemonium. “Cosmic Ritual Supertrip” has a monolithic force; guitars, drums and bass are all glued together to give the listener a punch in the face! This album gets its magic power from mixing together a 70’s attitude with a doom-occult and stoner rock sound in a masterful way.

We can count a bunch of singles, such as “Isolation” and “Master Rocket Power Blast”, as well as a couple of doomy songs like “Universal Phase” and “Saacred Graal” and also more catchy tunes like “Radio 666” and “At Midnight You Cry”. This is the 8th album of the band and we believe the best one so far. Recorded at Forward Studios in Rome on a huge Neve desk, this new gem will be out May 1st, on Heavy Psych Sounds Records.

The amazing artwork, made by the one and only Robin Gnista, is matching in its entirety the album music concept.

tracklist:
1. At Midnight You Cry
2. Universal Phase
3. Radio 666
4. Isolation
5. The Great Design
6. Hypnotized By The Solenoid
7. Master Rocket Power Blast
8. Snowball
9. Glittereyzed
10. Sacred Graal

BLACK RAINBOWS is:
Gabriele Fiori – Guitar/Vocals
Filippo Ragazzoni – Drums
Edoardo “Mancio” Mancini – Bass

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