Portland, Oregon’s Robots of the Ancient World released their second album, Mystic Goddess, on May 21 through Small Stone Records and Kozmik Artifactz. And while it’s immediately notable that the five-piece worked with producer/legend Jack Endino (and Mikel Perkins) on the recording of this follow-up to their 2019 debut, Cosmic Riders, having solidified their lineup in the interim, what’s even more notable as one makes the trip through the eight-track/42-minute outing is the cross-microgenre stylistic melange with which the band is working.

There are certainly uniting factors in the guitars of Nico Schmutz and Justin Laubscher, the Doors-via-Danzig (Doorzig?) vocal style of Caleb Weidenbach that tops the rolling, fluid groove of bassist Trevor Berecek and drummer Harry Silvers, but the open creative spirit is palpable, from the low-end centered sway and epic-tales vibe of the opening title-track through “Wasteland”‘s heavy blues also nodding to Kadavar in its vocal melody, on down through the willful plunge into doom of the 10-minute “Lucifyre” — a penultimate track swaying along to its own languid bassline, rife with trippy leads, shouts of its title and a long noise-and-sample finish (David Icke, who was booted from social media last year for spreading COVID-19 misinformation) followed only by the CD/DL-only acoustic-into-grunge-riffed closer “Ordo ab Chao,” which asks the question “Who do you think you are?” less as a challenge than a genuine query of how one sees oneself in the universe. As that song, and the album, finishes like a raw, minus-harmonies outtake from Sap, one can’t help but wonder indeed how Robots of the Ancient World might answer the question.

Perhaps they’d be so brazen as to think they’re themselves. That’s how Mystic Goddess ultimately makes it sound, whatever elements they may smash together in the Hadron collider of a bluesy, wah-infused cut like “Agua Caliente” to get there. The unmitigated Pacific Northwest janga-janga stonerly chug of “Out of the Gallows” — which, oh, hey, just happens to have a video premiering below — betrays the secret of the ooze in its bassy righteousness. If Robots of the Ancient World are the rock ’em sock ’em type, it’s the low end providing the force behind their punches. So be it as “Unholy Trinity” opens side B with a darker and more atmospheric turn, still lumbering rock, drunken swagger and so on, but culminating with more foreboding heft in preface for what’s to come after the don’t-mind-us-we’re-just-gonna-sneak-in-this-tambourine-party “MK Ultra Violence” is there and gone in three and a half minutes and “Lucifyre” takes hold.

The word is “dynamic,” but the band’s mission isn’t just to put together parts in a this-sounds-like-this-and-this-sounds-like-that succession of new and old stylistic references, and neither are they tucked in that prodigious, riff-filled corner of the US without purpose behind their craft. I wouldn’t call what they do progressive if only for the level of self-indulgence that automatically implies, but there is underlying thought even to their bluesiest, loosest-seeming moments, a willful letting go that makes a forward charge like “Out of the Gallows” that much richer. It’s rock and roll, kids. Mystic Goddess alights on a whole bunch of this and that aesthetically, and they do it well, but to miss the preach of rock and roll is to miss the point entirely.

Check out the aforementioned video for “Out of the Gallows” below — one can’t help but be reminded of Axl Rose‘s disappearing t-shirt in “Welcome to the Jungle” while watching the sunglasses come and go from Weidenbach‘s face — and dig into the full album stream after the PR wire info, which has more about the recording.

Most of all, enjoy:

Robots of the Ancient World, “Out of the Gallows” official video premiere

ROBOTS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD entered Seattle’s Soundhouse Studios in February 2020 to record with Jack Endino, famed sonic architect of the grunge revolution, and his longtime protégé Mikel Perkins. They emerged through the wormhole with Mystic Goddess, a forty-three-minute hallucinatory sound excursion through a wide range of styles that keeps listeners engaged while never losing focus or sacrificing flow.

“Raw, powerful, no nonsense production is what we were seeking,” says guitarist Justin Laubscher. After connecting with Endino through a friend and veteran of the grunge wars, Laubscher says the band “scraped up every nickel we could and went for it.”

Recorded, mixed, and mastered in six days, Mystic Goddess almost crashed and burned prior to liftoff. Four days in, Endino abruptly fell ill, “wrecked from this weird flu from hell,” according to Laubscher. “At the time, COVID-19 was not yet a thing in the US.” Perkins engineered the final two days of tracking. “Perkins is a legend, stepped in without missing a beat, and we all felt at ease. He entertained our more fringe ideas, the ones up until that point I was apprehensive to present to Jack.” Endino eventually finished the mixes remotely and Perkins is credited as co-producer.

“I’m intrigued by psychedelics, esotericism, and conspiracy theories. I love to go deep with secret societies, other dimensions, and all that jazz. So, when you hear the Carl Sagan intro to ‘Cosmic Riders’ or David Icke closing out ‘Mystic Goddess,’ it’s a tribute,” notes Laubscher, “a nod to those dudes who are a creative inspiration for my song writing.”

ROBOTS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD:
Caleb Weidenbach – vocals
Nico Schmutz – guitar
Justin Laubscher – guitar
Trevor Berecek – bass
Harry Silvers – drums

Robots of the Ancient World, Mystic Goddess (2021)

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Tags: Kozmik Artifactz, Mystic Goddess, Oregon, Portland, Robots of the Ancient World, Robots of the Ancient World Mystic Goddess, Small Stone Records

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2021 at 10:24 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.