Night o’Mine is the second album through Elektrohasch from Austrian foursome Been Obscene in as many years. Their 2010 debut, The Magic Table Dance (review here), put them in league with a steadily growing ilk of warmly-toned jam-minded European heavy psych acts – bands like Asteroid and The Machine taking fuzz and freedom from Colour Haze and Kyuss and injecting them with the fresh energy of new bands still finding their sounds. Been Obscene (also sometimes written as the one word BeenObscene) were anything but obscene on The Magic Table Dance, and with Night o‘Mine, the same lineup returns after a not insignificant amount of road time with a crisper approach and some more solidified songwriting. Like the first album, the sophomore outing is comprised of eight tracks, but guitarist Thomas Nachtigal – his name translating to “nightingale” befitting the record’s nocturnal schematic – has stepped up on the vocals and the sense of structure overall is stronger for it. Nachtigal is joined in Been Obscene by guitarist Peter Kreyci, bassist/vocalist Philipp Zezula and drummer Robert Schoosleitner, and the four work remarkably well together, the guitarists playing off each other with marked chemistry while the bass and drums solidify and add to the build of a song like “Snake Charmer,” which presents the jammier side of what turns out to be a strong balance between the straightforward and the more openly-approached.

But right away, opener “Endless Scheme” shows a definite increase in stylistic complexity. The song begins with an angular, energetic burst before transitioning into a cymbal-crashing groove that seems held up by guitar leads and Schoosleitner’s steady rhythm and finally shifting into hi-hat taps and contrasting ambience and My Sleeping Karma-esque heavy rock smoothness. There are vocals early on, and they come back at the end for a chorus return, and that works well to show how much Been Obscene have grown; The Magic Table Dance opened instrumentally and felt less structurally aware overall. Likewise, the work that Zezula adds not only through the engaging warmth of his bass, but also with vocals backing Nachtigal during the chorus of “Endless Scheme” is an example of how Been Obscene have been able to develop in just the year since their last offering. Though it starts out quiet, in its latter moments, “Snake Charmer” (7:40) finds the instruments paying off a momentum the vocals helped craft early on, and though “Cut the Rope” is so quick at 3:23 that were it not also as effectively composed and as catchy as it is, it would simply pass unnoticed, “Apathy” follows and finds Nachtigal adding his vocals to a musical drama not unlike that at the end of “Snake Charmer,” and one that works in a shorter amount of time to develop a similar vibrancy, despite a somewhat darker atmosphere. The repeated line, “Breaking down your foolish apathy,” becomes a sort of centerpiece credo the rest of Night o’Mine works around and hits especially heavy surrounded by the start-stop Queens of the Stone Age-isms of “Cut the Rope” and the title-track, on which the speaker cones sound like they’re about to catch fire for the analog push of the material.

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