Album Review: Deadly Vipers, Low City Drone
Fuzz gratia fuzzis. France’s Deadly Vipers have dug their hands into pilot-ready dunes and emerge with their second album and first for Fuzzorama Records, Low City Drone, collecting eight tracks that, while varied in their individual purposes, speak to an overarching love of the form and play to desert rock stylizations with marked and particular aplomb. The follow-up to 2017’s well-received Fueltronaut (review here), the 45-minute offering sounds bigger, broader in its soundscapes and brighter in the sunny warmth beating down thereupon, finding sonic kinship not only with the likes of Kyuss and Slo Burn, Dozer, Astrosoniq and Truckfighters — who of course run the Fuzzorama label and whose Niklas Källgren mixed and mastered the recording; David Hannier at Seven Theory Studio, SJPC, France, engineered — but with the generation of bands they helped plug in and turn up: the likes of earlier 1000mods, Valley of the Sun, and so on.
They know what they’re going for, in other words, and the mindful impact and flow of Low City Drone is the result — a groove that permeates loud or quiet, fast or slow, and carries the listener from the intro “Echoes From Wasteland” with its quiet beginning and click-pedals-on springing forth, gradually unveiling the full heft that Deadly Vipers have on offer, all the way to the seemingly complementary finisher “Big Empty,” which likewise starts quiet and builds its way engagingly toward a satisfying last crescendo, peaking, spacing out, and ultimately returning to cap with a riff that subtly calls out Kyuss‘ “Asteroid” and the earlier “Atom” as if to underscore the message they’ve been transmitting all along. I do not know the geology of Perpignan, France, from whence they hail and if you think desert rock can only come from the American desert, by now there are at least a quarter-century’s worth of killer bands to readily demonstrate otherwise. Deadly Vipers elbow their way onto that list with this record.
A highlight and focal point for the four-piece — the lineup: standalone vocalist Fred Chinarro, guitarist David Migaud, bassist Thomas Gronnier and drummer Rudy Carretero, any of whom might provide backing vocals — is the nine-minute title-track, “Low City Drone,” which is a standout in more than runtime, but before they get there, “Atom” picks up from “Echoes From Wasteland” with the first declaration of Kyussism in its riff and Chinarro‘s John Garcia-esque melodic belt-out. Catchy, the post-intro leadoff breaks at about its halfway point and throws in some speedier push and some well-placed distinguishing keyboard from Gronnier before turning back to the slower progression, mellowing out, building back up. A sense of Deadly Vipers weaving their way from one part to the next — not ever more abrupt than they want to be, but not staying still by any means — pervades Low City Drone, and much to its benefit.
The title-track puts the bass forward in the mix (not a complaint) early and sweeps into its hook at about 90 seconds into its comparatively extended runtime, verse vocals laced with echo to add to the spaciousness. The second verse/chorus trade finds the bassline holding across a break and guitar solo peppered with statistically significant crashes and jamming gradually toward organ-topped boogie and thrust, the chorus reemerging over top to effectively convey an uptick in intensity. They calm it down and mellow it out, but it’s just taking a breath before the last push — bass bouncing all the while — after which they bring it down gracefully, hit a final crash and precede side A closer “Welli Welloo” with a few seconds of silence before diving into the more straight-ahead hook, the backing vocals behind Chinarro subtly adding to the memorability of the song from within that wall of fuzz surrounding. The mini-closer marks the album’s midpoint with a summary of what’s worked best so far about Low City Drone in its tone, its awareness of craft and where it’s going, its pacing for maximum groove, etc. Deadly Vipers make their lack of pretense an essential facet of their style, and their clear passion and celebration of the fuzz feels sincere and is all the more engaging for that.
Marked by some sitar-y psych-leaning guitar in its second half before its big blowout — that’ll come back in the closer, briefly — the four-minute instrumental (more than an intro in substance as well as length) “Meteor Part II” leads side B in an apparent answer to “Meteor Valley” from the first record, not quite hypnotic and not quite trying to hypnotize, but comfortable in its nod just the same. “Last Rise” arrives with near-immediate ceremony in its lumbering beginning and the “ahh” vocals that come to back the chorus. The fuzz sounds like it just ate a very large dinner, and is what the comedian Patton Oswalt once referred to as ‘B-word fat,’ but Deadly Vipers still manage to bring it down to a stretch of dreamy guitar and melodic bass before blending the heavier low end back in, keys complementing en route back to the verse. They don’t bring back that “ahh” hook, but “Last Rise” ends with satisfyingly massive plod just the same, the organ the last thing to go before the penultimate “Ego Trip” picks up like nothing just happened; riffy business as usual on Low City Drone.
Fair enough, since that’s kind of true, and pretty clearly intentional on the part of the band. In its pace and progression, there’s a bit of cowbell in there past the midsection and it comes back at the end, later bass quirk in the suddenly-jazzy synth-accompanied bridge, and near-shouted resurgence, “Ego Trip” is maybe the most clearly aligned of the bunch with Truckfighters, but the personality it shows serves the album well carrying into “Big Empty,” which spaces the vocals out more, again leans on the bass like in the title-track (still not a complaint), and ties together the desert and the expanse atmospheres with one more fluid execution, lead guitar rising here, there a quick breath setting up the final movement across the last minute and a half, the moment of arrival as they harken back in the ending to “Atom” for just a measure before closing.
That’s fairly emblematic of Low City Drone as a whole, not just in its summary of what Deadly Vipers have wrought across the record, but also the depth that coincides with its forward shove and the sense of atmosphere that results organically from the amalgam that is their approach. Along with songwriting, one of the band’s strengths is their ability to hold their material together amid such tonal reverie, to not lose themselves in the world they’re making. That they’re ultimately clearheaded isn’t necessarily a surprise given how they presented themselves on Fueltronaut, but Low City Drone pushes them further along their charted course and feels purposeful in the moves its makes, delivering on potential while setting them up for continued growth and intricacy. One could ask no more of Low City Drone than one receives, and patient, repeat listens are all the more rewarded. It may be a wasteland, this ‘big empty,’ but it teems with life just the same.
