Review & Full Album Premiere: Dead Sea Apes, Psychic Tension
Manchester, UK, heavy psych instrumentalists Dead Sea Apes release their new album, Psychic Tension, on Sept. 18 through Cardinal Fuzz (UK) and Feeding Tube Records (US). The eclectic trio are prone to collaboration and various one-offs, but through these five songs/40 minutes, they find a balance with guitarist Brett Savage, bassist Jack Toker (also guitar) and drummer Chris Hardman that one couldn’t say is incomplete at all, harnessing sans-vocal exploration with each turn as likely to bring a breakout as a dig-in, the opening track “Damn Your Eyes” accentuating the volatility in their sound and the weirdness that pervades the album when taken as an entirety.
Whether it’s the scorch of “Psychic Tension” or the riff-extrapolation into mad cacophony of centerpiece “Severance,” Dead Sea Apes offer a glimpse at chaos without actually being in danger of coming off the rails. Also the rails are made of jelly. Also so is your brain. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Obviously cognizant of modern post-this-or-that, they’re less about adhering to genre and more about carving their own space. They’ve been at it for 17 years, so their control of the tumult shouldn’t be a surprise — 2023’s Rewilding was a little more stripped down, its companion-piece Rewilder boasted longer-form jams; Psychic Tension has this cake and eats it too — and it’s evident from “Damn Your Eyes” forward, the seven-and-a-half-minute leadoff playing to both the end-result mindset and the spontaneity with which that’s infused. Again, this is core methodology to Dead Sea Apes, and they’ve got 10 records plus a slew of collaborations that’s led them to this point, but it’s to their credit that the music still
carries a spirit of pushing forward, of eschewing comfort zones. Expertise without self-importance? It’s almost punk, in that way.
The gleefully noisy finish of “Severance” — I know that’s a tv show; I don’t know if the song has anything to do with it or not — gives over to the welcome-to-the-B-side pairing of two nine-minute cuts “Ursa Minor” and “Deathless,” and the bassy rumble and light guitar feedback at the outset of the former establishes a sense of arrival even before the willfully slow roll kicks in. From there it’s heavy psychedelic glories by the dozen, a righteous and righteously Britpsych flow that just might have you also thinking of The Heads-style freakouts, but that mellows in its middle and goes exploring from there, never really building back to that initial force. That’s a choice rather than an oversight; it’s not like Dead Sea Apes haven’t to that point demonstrated they know how to pay off a progression, they’re just doing something else with “Ursa Minor.” If that has you expecting a noisy onslaught in “Deathless,” you’re partially right, there are a couple genuine swells of solo-burnt noise in amid the more subdued movement and moderated tempo, but the loud parts are no more the point of the thing than the quiet. It’s the balance of both and the repetition surrounding that makes it effective.
Whether they’re cross-genre or anti-genre or however you want to frame it, stylistic individualism is part of what’s being pursued in Psychic Tension, and by that I mean Dead Sea Apes aren’t trying to sound like anyone so much as themselves. That’s an inward plunge, and for sure the songs bear out that introversion — they’re not blastbeats and deathgrowls in terms of extremity, but neither is the record immediately accessible — but among the converted and the peristently weird, this is a thing to be celebrated. I guess it depends on what kind of brain you have, how far it’ll take you. You can get lost in the intricacy, the nuance of each change and the heady but not overly cerebral vibe being cast, or you can put your earbuds in and succumb to the wash. I’m not here to advocate one over the other, but whether you’ve heard them before or not, Dead Sea Apes are built to go and ready to take you with them.
Psychic Tension premieres in full on the player below, followed by more from the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
Dead Sea Apes, Psychic Tension album premiere
Dead Sea Apes are back with a fierce new album Psychic Tension – an urgent soundtrack for the nerve-shredding times we live in. Our collective psyche is under attack, reeling from the chaos of a modern world under siege: from war, death, destruction and climate catastrophe to political decay, media manipulation, growing inequality and the rank depravity of the so-called elite. Do we overload ourselves with anxiety, vent our frustration at others, make token gestures to ease our conscience, or just try to carry on regardless? Dead Sea Apes have wrestled these dilemmas – this Psychic Tension – into sonic/musical form, creating catharsis from the chaos.
Psychic Tension picks up where the previous album Rewilding left off, carrying forward the momentum of massive riffs, juggernaut rhythms and squalling sonic overload. Noise-rock, Japanese psych, minimal dub and Electric-era Miles are all part of the mix: each member of Dead Sea Apes brings decades of musical exploration to bear on the music. The iterative repetition of Can meets the telepathic mind-meld of the power trio; the deceptive simplicity of Crazy Horse is pulled through the sonics of PSF Records; the live-in-the-practice-room energy is bolstered by layered landscapes of sound – from ethereal echoes to feedback drones to transistor-torturing lead lines.
Psychic Tension Tracklist:
01. Damn Your Eyes
02. Psychic Tension
03. Severance
04. Ursa Minor
05. Deathless
Dead Sea Apes is:
Brett Savage – Guitars
Jack Toker – Bass, Guitars
Chris Hardman – Drums
Feeding Tube Records on Bandcamp
Feeding Tube Records on Instagram
Feeding Tube Records on Facebook
Tags: Cardinal Fuzz, Dead Sea Apes, Dead Sea Apes Psychic Tension, Feeding Tube Records, Manchester, Psychic Tension, UK
[…] Our new album Psychic Tension is officially released tomorrow (Friday 18th). Before that, there’s an exclusive stream of the album over at The Obelisk. […]