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Review & Track Premiere: Spaceslug, Reign of the Orion

Spaceslug Reign of the Orion cover

Spaceslug, ‘Spacerunner’ official track premiere

[Click play above to stream ‘Spacerunner’ from Spaceslug’s Reign of the Orion. Album is out Dec. 6.]

Forward thinking atmospheric fuzz/psych rockers Spaceslug almost let 2019 get away without releasing an album. The Wroclaw-based three-piece have had at least one full-length out per year since the arrival in 2016 of their debut, Lemanis (review here). Time Travel Dilemma (review here) followed in 2017, along with an EP, Mountains and Reminiscence (review here), and in 2018 they marked a new stage of their progression with their third LP, Eye the Tide (review here), pushing themselves beyond the warm-toned bounds of heavy psychedelia to incorporate darker ambient shades and more extreme elements like screamed vocals and blackened squibblies on guitar and blastbeats to accompany.

Already this year, the trio of drummer/vocalist Kamil Ziólkowski, bassist/vocalist Jan Rutka and guitarist/backing vocalist Bartosz Janik took part in a four-way split with Polish countrymen DopelordMajor Kong and Weedpecker (review here), so it’s not like the year would’ve gone completely unaccounted for (perish the thought), but the landing of five-tracker Reign of the Orion is nothing if not welcome. With it, Spaceslug mark another step in their sound and offer their most hypnotic work to-date, entrancing through breadth of tone and a flow that extends even to the aggressive moments in centerpiece “Half Moon Burns,” which never gets quite as charred as the last album did, but nonetheless features some more aggressive shouting.

In that song’s 8:45 run and in the massive surge of nine-minute closer/longest track “Beneath the Haze,” Spaceslug seem to conjure shifts in volume and tempo alike as they move with deceptive structural clarity through open-feeling verses and choruses, but even in the calmer spaciousness of the shorter “Trees of Gold” between those two, there’s a sense both of expanse in atmosphere and of the band creatively grasping toward new ground. Given their prolific nature, one can only surmise that the progression they’ve undertaken is willful — i.e., they want to try something new each time they set down to write — and while their sound remains identifiable in the lush low end of Rutka‘s bass and the slow-churning effects wash of Janik‘s guitar, as well as the blend of laid-back post-grunge vocals and sometimes crushing tonality as heard on opener “Down to the Sun,” the dividends paid by their efforts are considerable throughout Reign of the Orion, which would seem to assure that, if it’s ever coming, creative stagnation is a long way off.

That’s reassuring, but more so are the songs themselves, which bolster the statements Spaceslug have made to-date while continuing a push into headphone-ready wash, a soothing immersive sensibility that has become an essential facet of the band’s approach in what’s still a relatively brief amount of time for it to do so. If one expects anything of them at this point in their career, it’s that space and a feeling of presence within it will meet in their songs, and as Reign of the Orion moves back and forth between longer and shorter songs, with “Down to the Sun” at seven and a half minutes and the subsequent “Space Runner” at 6:40 ahead of the already-noted more stark time contrast between “Half Moon Burns,” “Trees of Gold” and “Beneath the Haze,” there’s an overarching linear flow that’s all the more highlighted for the changes from one to the next and the general outbound feel of the entirety.

spaceslug at freak valley

That’s most emphasized on “Trees of Gold,” admittedly, which brings Spaceslug to a new place in terms of incorporating elements out of progressive rock and even pastoralist folk. A touch of Floyd vibe here and there doesn’t hurt either, but the drift on “Trees of Gold,” and especially the fact that the song doesn’t then depart to an earthmover riff feels significant. It adds to the context of Reign of the Orion as a whole, and while in itself it isn’t doing anything the band has never incorporated into its songs before, the shift in presentation still makes a difference.

Likewise the fact that that Reign of the Orion, at five songs and 36 minutes, is the shortest long-player Spaceslug have released. This could be a direct reaction to Eye the Tide, which was the longest at 54 minutes (the first two were in the circa-45 range), or it could be happenstance, or the result of a narrative intended to tie the songs together — though the attack-ships Blade Runner sample in “Half Moon Burns” and the prove-you-exist samples in “Beneath the Haze” would seem to contradict that notion — I don’t know. The effect it has, though, is to bring Reign of the Orion, both as a whole and in its individual component pieces, into clearer focus as a work. Whether it’s the linear front-to-back listening experience or a track-by-track journey through, the relative brevity here gives the listener more to grasp onto while maintaining the band’s signature elements and presenting them in next-stage-progression form.

It doesn’t hurt, is what I’m saying, and much to their credit as songwriters, it feels complete, as though to add more would only be superfluous, particularly given the manner in which “Beneath the Haze” builds to a nigh-on-overwhelming finish before dissipating in a consuming was of noise and residual effects leftovers, like the background radiation from the Big Bang echoing cosmic for as long as there’s a cosmos to echo in. That Spaceslug would set up and enact this fluidity with such obvious intent and pull it off sounding natural in a balance of highlight songs and overall movement speaks to the maturity that’s come about so quickly in their style.

In short, they’ve become one of Europe’s strongest progressive heavy psych bands, giving due acknowledgement of their roots in fuzz even as they take off toward broader reaches. New album in 2020? Given the timing of Reign of the Orion, that’s a maybe, but it seems likely we’ll hear from them one way or another, and given what they’ve done to this point in their career, that’s only something to anticipate. It was clear from the outset with Lemanis were onto something and could become a special band. As they continue to move forward at such a rapid pace, we’re seeing the realization of that potential in everything they do. If they can keep the momentum they have going now and stave off burnout, they’ll move into the vaunted realms of the influential.

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