If you’ve got a mind to dig it, Mystery Ship don’t skimp on the vibe. Their straightforwardly-titled EP II (review here) was an attention-getter last year, and though it comes accompanied by Adam Burke artwork of a much different style (that sleeve is white, despite any shadow in the picture), the new, subsequent Knick Knack Records 7″ single, Bridgeburner b/w Chinatown, follows suit in continuing the development of Mystery Ship‘s retro grooving. There’s an awful lot of heavy ’70s loyalist rock and roll out there, but an awful lot less of it comes from the States, and on “Bridgeburner” and “Chinatown” — both of which are denoted on back of the record sleeve as being the A side — the Seattle four-piece make a solid argument for American contribution to the form of classic heavy rock.

Unpretentious and unaggressive, but still weighted in tone and forceful in their push, their take isn’t wholly unlike that of like-minded East Coasters The Golden Grass, though Mystery Ship have an inherently bluesier style and get down with some post-Graveyard shuffle, particularly here on “Bridgeburner,” which sets out on a warm bassline from Alex Hagenah (also vocals) that sets an organic tone for the entrance of guitarist Josh Kupferschmid, lead guitarist/vocalist Michael Wohl and drummer Travis Curry, none of whom disrupt it. Like both songs are listed as the A side, both also start with some in-studio mention of whether or not the tape is rolling, so that live feel is no accident as “Bridgeburner” moves from its strong hook into a Wohl led break that’s somewhat airy despite the tension held in Curry‘s toms. A boogie good for the soul, and not the last they have to offer.

Hagenah and Wohl trade who takes the lead vocal on “Bridgeburner” and the more swing-heavy blues of “Chinatown,” but neither song is wholly one or the other up front, and that works to the benefit of both and the distinction of one from its flipside. “Chinatown” only feels like it’s missing snaps to be complete in an alternate-universe lounge kind of way, but it makes due with its classy-in-spite-of-itself feel and offers a chorus somewhat more in the pocket than that of “Bridgeburner,” but making sly use of clean tones in the verse only to feed to dirtier leads later on, of course bookending with a last refrain, delivered more fervently.

They’re in and out in under eight minutes — unless it takes you 10 to get up and flip the record — and since both “Bridgeburner” and “Chinatown” were recorded in Jan. 2013, they more or may not show where Mystery Ship are now, more than a year later, but the quality of the songwriting makes Bridgeburner b/w Chinatown a significant-enough stopgap that it’s worth digging into. I’ll be interested to hear how Mystery Ship‘s penchant for variety plays out over the course of a debut full-length, and just how bluesy they’ll go when given the opportunity to really meander. Could a 10-minute psych/blues freakout be in the works? Got my fingers crossed.

Mystery Ship, Bridgeburner / Chinatown (2014)

Mystery Ship on Thee Facebooks

Mystery Ship on Bandcamp

Knick Knack Records

It’s a resonant but difficult to place course that Brooklyn trio Eidetic Seeing chart on their second, self-released full-length, Against Nature. The band — guitarist Sean Forlenza, drummer Paul Feitzinger (also synth) and bassist Danilo Randjic-Coleman — shift easily between pulses of aggro-jazz and post-rocking doom, resulting in a kind of gritty wash made all the more immersive by their mostly-instrumental approach. Particularly on side B’s “Ashplant Blues” and “K2,” both of which top 10 minutes, it’s hard to know where one stops and the other ends, and that’s obviously on purpose on the part of the three-piece, who seem to arrive at an airy dreariness on the 11-minute finale, like Crippled Black Phoenix gone wandering and slamming into a brick wall of stylized freakout, dense fuzz and those gravity waves from the Big Bang that I keep hearing so much about.

Tonal warmth is high, both on “K2” and throughout most of what precedes it, which makes the cooler greys of the matte-finish LP cover — the record itself is black vinyl housed in a black dust jacket — somewhat mysterious, but I suppose multicolor psychedelia has been done to death and rebirth, black and white less so. If that’s representative of a drive toward individualism, it’s mirrored in the five songs included on Against Nature as well. From the opening strums of side A’s launch with “A Snake Whose Years are Long,” which give a deceptive impression of Americana that the song ultimately has little interest in fulfilling, Eidetic Seeing show themselves as patient when they want to be and propulsive in kind. The shortest inclusion on Against Nature is the third track, “Frôleuse,” and even that tops six and a half minutes, so there’s plenty of space for the trio to flesh out and pursue sonic whims where and when they might.

And while there is a suitable meandering sense for (mostly) instrumental heavy psych, this is somewhat offset by shifts into grounded, densely weighted riffs. “A Snake Whose Years are Long” establishes an expertise in the technique, not so much trading back and forth as oozing between one side and the other, and “White Flight” moves from a dreamy synth opening to some of the most dead-on traditional Sabbathian tonality I’ve heard. The kicker is Eidetic Seeing don’t use it to mimic Sabbath. Instead they just ride the riff momentarily on the way to a stomping verse of building intensity that, in turn, cuts back to smoky jazz, undercutting its class with abrasive feedback before moving on to more glorious space riffing. A noisy finish cuts cold into the start of “Frôleuse,” the capstone of an A side that shows no less delight in ignoring the Lego instructions of genre as it constructs a somewhat more tempered spaceship of its own design.

“Frôleuse” hands down disenchantment in a chaotically swirling culmination made rawer through natural-sounding production — that is, they’re not lush even at their farthest out — and after the flip, “Ashplant Blues” seems to answer back with some initially doomed-out lumbering, but the personality of the song and of the second side as a whole is distinct from the first half of Against Nature and shows Eidetic Seeing are comfortable pitting longform works against each other as they are the sounds of Morricone and Russian Circles. Ultimately, Against Nature — which presumably was not named in honor of the Maryland classic heavy rock outfit featuring the members of Revelation, though one never knows — stands as an intriguing and self-directed LP, and while Eidetic Seeing present an approach with some rougher edges, they seem more to delight in riding the sharp corners than to be in need of smoothing out. If it’s to be a long-term creative progression, Against Nature makes a solid argument for following it.

Eidetic Seeing, Against Nature (2013)

Eidetic Seeing on Bandcamp

Eidetic Seeing on Thee Facebooks

Dressed in wizard robes and toting songs like “Crabs” and “Super Sluts from Outer Space” — I think I saw that movie — the trio Blackwitch Pudding emerge from Portland, Oregon, with a forceful helping of semi-psychedelic sludge on their first LP, Taste the Pudding. I’ve worked pretty hard to do so and found myself largely unable to get past the classically metallic misogyny of the album’s cover, which falls flat of intentional irony and saps This is Spinal Tap of its satire while trading a leash for a blindfold, thus leaving open the possibility that, hey, maybe she’s into it and this is a practice in which she’s engaging as part of a loving, fulfilling relationship, only to close it again via the element of force implied by the second hand behind the drawn figure’s head. But because one only invites bullshit by namecalling (there’s only so many times I’m willing to hear that I “don’t get it”), I’ll stick to the music of the self-releasing three-piece’s debut. They make glorious use of dirt-encrusted tonal largesse, veering here and there into more extreme, Zoroaster-esque growling murk on “Shark Commando” and their finale, while saving start-stop plod for “Crabs” on side B.

The wizard-centric lineup of guitarist Space Wizard, bassist Lizard Wizard and drummer Wizard Wizard — they’re like the Ramones, only magical — plant a foot deep in the post-Sleep school of riff worship, but there’s a character to 10-minute closer “Acid Castle Mountain Top” that portrays more than “Dragonaut” imitation, Blackwitch Pudding leaving most of the all-out growls for the end of each half of the album, which is something all the more apparent on the vinyl version than the CD or digital, though Taste the Pudding benefits from the variety in whichever format. They ultimately descend in that closer from a trance-inducing nod to a smoke-clouded and noisy finish with even the drums spaced out by the end, all degenerating over a bed of constant toms, much darker and heavier than the don’t-take-it-too-seriously art and titles would seem to dogwhistle to the converted. Earlier on, “Gathering Panties” churns with beastly aplomb, a blast of low-end underscoring a riff that would otherwise motor were it not too monolithic to budge on the way to more fast/slow tradeoffs. Tempo dexterity works to Blackwitch Pudding‘s advantage from the start on opener “Mortre’D,” which drones and rumbles and abyss-shouts its way to life over the course of its seven-plus minutes, only to smoothly culminate with an increasingly speedy rush at the end of it.

And “Super Sluts from Outer Space,” which follows, may be the shortest cut of the bunch — also probably the most stoner rock, thickening and obscuring an otherwise Red Fang-style mover groove, though there’s plenty of dank competition — but even it finds room for a moment’s pause in the middle, brief as it is. I find some of the album’s most effective bludgeonry to be in “Swamp Gas of the Nevermizer,” which blends airy psychedelic leads with crunching riffs, the already-noted fluidity of tempo, lyrics that may or may not be about farts, and even touches on blending the cleaner and more abrasive vocal approaches on display elsewhere in various measure. As the start of side B, it’s a standout cut anyway, though not the apex of Taste the Pudding itself, which make no mistake arrives in “Acid Castle Mountain Top.” Still, the overarching impression of Blackwitch Pudding‘s debut — visuals aside — is in its showcasing of the trio’s tones and how they might proceed from here to pummel their listeners with them. It’s a more than effective display, proving particularly through Lizard Wizard‘s bass that low end can reach just as impressive expanses as echoing, richly effected guitar. If you’ve got speakers you’re looking to get rid of, Blackwitch Pudding would seem a worthy way of blowing them out.

Blackwitch Pudding, Taste the Pudding (2013)

Blackwitch Pudding on Thee Facebooks

Blackwitch Pudding on Bandcamp

“Gas, grass or ass. No one rides for free.” — ancient boogie van proverb

Here’s a fun idea: let’s talk about Fu Manchu. The long-running SoCal fuzz rock progenitors have a vinyl remaster of their 1994 debut LP, No One Rides for Free, out direct from the band on their own At the Dojo Records imprint, following reissues of In Search Of, The Action is Go, Godzilla’s/Eatin’ Dust, California Crossing Demos and a collection of their cover material aptly-titled The Covers. Even as they’re currently in the studio working on a follow-up to 2009’s Signs of Infinite Power, however, they’re going back to their van-worshiping roots in repressing No One Rides for Free. The album arrives in gatefold form, quality card stock with photos of the four-piece from that era, pressed either to yellow (300), clear (300) or black (the rest) platter of substantive heft, and sounds even better than it looks, the eight tracks reading like a gnostic text of the heavy that would follow in their wake over these two decades since No One Rides for Free was first issued.

The lineup of guitarist/vocalist Scott Hill, guitarist Eddie Glass, bassist Mark Abshire and drummer Ruben Romano would be a supergroup if they got together today, with Hill having put out some of CA’s finest fuzz in Fu Manchu over the years while the others went on to form Nebula (whereabouts unknown), Romano now good company and good time in The Freeks — never mind Brant Bjork, who produced the thing — but make no mistake, on No One Rides for Free, there were no laurels to rest upon. Fu Manchu had put out a handful of singles between 1990 and 1994, but what’s widely considered their best work lay well ahead of them, and 20 years ago, the laid back, easy-flowing grooves of side A cuts like the opening one-two of “Time to Fly” and “Ojo Rojo” didn’t fit nearly as easily into assignations like “stoner” and “fuzz,” since they barely existed as a subgenre of rock. It’s easy to imagine No One Rides for Free finding an audience among the more baked-out contingent in Southern California’s seemingly perpetual punk and hardcore scene — that’s where Fu Manchu‘s roots lie, as the 2010 Southern Lord release of Virulence‘s If this isn’t a Dream… 1985-1989 (review here) showed, with Hill, Abshire and Romano in that lineup — but it’s not like it came prepackaged with a sticker that said, “Okay kids, this is stoner rock! Get on board!”

And for everyone who wound up doing that (i.e. getting on board), it’s no stretch to figure there were just as many who heard the acoustics and dreamy leads of “Summer Girls (Free and Easy)” — which here starts side B — and had no clue or context for what to make. If it was next-generation surf rock, however, Fu Manchu could easily fit that bill. No One Rides for Free sets in place an allegiance to that culture that continues to be a part of the band’s identity to this day, and a lot of what they’d later turn into the core of their sound is present in these tracks, let alone a lyrical affinity for good times, vans, Camaros, chrome pipes, ladies, and so on. Is it the record that launched a thousand Spicolis? More likely it’s a piece of that burnout puzzle than a sole actor, but Fu Manchu make it plain by the time Romano starts in with the cowbell of “Shine it On” that they know what they’re doing, and that the rolling grooves preceding are no mistake. Hill sounds like a kid on “Show and Shine” and “Mega Bumpers,” but that only adds to the fun of the reissue, and with the interplay of his and Glass‘ guitars in the jam of closer “Snakebellies” — which they still pull back to the main riff before they’re done — it’s easy to hear where a lot of players might’ve heard it and decided to try their hand at something similar. Like everybody.

It’s not a release that needs to justify its own release. Some reissues you wonder why they even exist. For Fu Manchu to be re-releasing their back catalog as they continue to work on new material wants nothing for rationale, and since they obviously have the rights to the material, all the better they’re the ones getting the chance to profit from putting it back out. Its production might sound dated here and there, but No One Rides for Free has a righteousness at its core that Fu Manchu‘s unyielding relevance and enduring influence shows to be timeless, and whether you’re a fan looking for an excuse to revisit their early output or a newcomer just getting to know them beyond preliminary investigations, this LP seems to serve all interests in a manner worthy of the band’s legacy. You can’t really lose.

Fu Manchu, No One Rides for Free (1994)

Fu Manchu on Thee Facebooks

Fu Manchu’s website

The STB Records vinyl for Virginian psychedelic doomers Druglord‘s Enter Venus comes in three editions. The “diehard” is limited to 48 copies, has custom art from W. Ralph Walters, and comes with foil stamp, hand-numbered, clear vinyl with “dopesmoke” green splatter. An “OBI” version is what it sounds like — it comes with an OBI strip in Japanese and English. The vinyl is green with a white swirl and it’s limited to 90 copies. Given the quality of the presentation and its still-limited pressing of 115 copies, I hesitate to call third version “standard,” but I suppose of you think of it as a “high standard,” it makes more sense.

As ever, my photos don’t do the package justice. W. Ralph Walters‘ cover is part-glossy and part-matte on the front and back, the platter is the same milky-clear/green splatter as the diehard version, and both the cover and the liner sleeve are of a stock thick enough to do justice to the four cuts on Enter Venus itself, which hurls forth an otherworldly swirl of low end rumble and psychedelic echo. The three-piece of guitarist/vocalist/organist Tommy Hamilton, bassist Greta Brinkman and drummer Hufknell have reveled in righteous-order aural fuckery since (probably before) their 2010 self-titled demo (review here), and while 2011’s Motherfucker Rising (review here) expanded that form, Enter Venus is in a different class of sonic fullness. A recording job by Windhand‘s Garrett Morris positions the guitar and bass at the fore with Hufknell‘s cymbal wash behind and the vocals calling out as through trapped within the barrage of languid, drawling riffs.

On headphones, Enter Venus is all the more consuming, through the opening “Grievous Heaving” — still the best description I’ve encountered for Druglord‘s sound — and “Feast on the Eye” on side A, but particularly into the depths of side B’s “Enter Venus” and the closing “Let us Bleed.” This is something that was true of STB‘s limited tape version (review here), but while the tape benefited from the claustrophobic compression of the format, the LP — set for 45RPM presumably so that if you want to play it even more inhumanely slow than it already is, you can — likewise capitalizes on the expansive breadth and clarity. It’s like staring at a really clear blur. Hamilton, Brinkman and Hufknell shift into ambience here and there, as on the title-track, but the sense of plod is never completely gone, and at atmosphere of horror emerges not just because the lyrics (presented in the inner sleeve) throw in lines like “Rest in pieces/Ripped up and thrown in the grave” in “Let us Bleed” and “Haunt me forever/Demons underneath my skin” in “Grievous Heaving.” Vocals are often indecipherable without the lyric sheet. It’s the overarching dreadful impression of the vocals along with the morass of distortion, all of it taken together, that results in the brutal sensibility.

All told, the LP checks in at 27 minutes, so one could hardly accuse it of overstaying its welcome, but even just with two songs on each side and both sides clocking in under 15 minutes, there’s no lack of substance. An opening sample gives darkly religious overtones and from there it’s a slow-motion slaughter. Still, the vivid colors of the packaging in which Enter Venus arrives suit it well, playing to the psychedelic elements brought through in the recording, which even if they’re brought forth in a grueling, wretched manner hold strong to an otherworldly feel. It just so happens that the other world is populated by monsters.

Today I have the extreme pleasure in addition to checking out the vinyl itself of hosting a full stream of the album. Find it on the player below and please enjoy:

[mp3player width=480 height=300 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=druglord-enter-venus.xml]

The Enter Venus LP is available now for preorder through STB Records and will be released Feb. 22. More info at the following links:

Druglord on Thee Facebooks

Druglord’s BigCartel store

STB Records on Thee Facebooks

STB Records’ BigCartel store

I’ve had Wo Fat on the brain lately, ever since I found out they’d have a new record out this year and they got announced for Small Stone‘s showcases in Boston and Brooklyn this March, as well as playing Freak Valley in Germany this coming May, so with a ton going on, it didn’t seem outlandish to pay their 2012 fourth full-length, The Black Code (review here), another visit. Small Stone put the thing out on vinyl last year in a first run of 500 split up among three color variations. Gone. Second pressing comes limited to 250 copies in 180g vinyl, either solid yellow or transparent orange. The one I got is solid yellow, which I think sits pretty well next to the Alexander Von Wieding album art, playing off the greens of the cover itself and in the gatefold and accenting the band’s logo and the sand of the otherworldly desert landscape. Call me superficial if you want, but in addition to being a fuzz-drenched glory-jam of a full-length, it’s also a nice-looking find.

As to the record itself, well, if you didn’t hear it when you came out, not to be a prick about it, but you’ve been missing out on some of the finest heavy fuzz the US has to offer. As the folks — myself included — who caught Wo Fat at Roadburn last year, they’ll tell you. Wo Fat tap into classically hairy tones and fit them to whatever proportional gag about “Texas-sized” you might want to make. Guitarist/vocalist Kent Stump drives the formidable groove of “Lost Highway” and “The Black Code” on side A, opening things up a bit to let drummer Michael Walter tie up purposefully-left-loose ends on “Hurt at Gone” while bassist Tim Wilson adds bottom end heft to the languid-but-swinging push. The Black Code was self-recorded, but wants nothing for production in either its clarity of natural vibe, and Wo Fat lock in their riffy grooves like the unpretentious heirs to Fu Manchu, saving plenty of room to jam in these long, spacious-sounding tracks.

That’s true all the more on side B of the vinyl, which feels all the more like a wall of fuzz with the CD-closing duo of “The Shard of Leng” and “Sleep of the Black Lotus” flowing one right into the next. One factor that particularly stands out in revisiting The Black Code is that although it’s the jammiest outing Wo Fat have released to date, the songs also hold tightly to memorable choruses, whether it’s “The Shard of Leng” building from its slow-groove intro into more straight-driving riffy crunch or “Lost Highway” kicking the record off with one of its most resonant hooks back on side A. As a power trio, Stump, Wilson and Walter are dead-on and their transitions run accordingly smooth. “The Shard of Leng” stomps its way through swaggering riffery, comfortably paced but irresistibly grooving, with Walter backing Stump‘s vocals in the chorus before breaking out the cowbell and signaling the move into The Black Code‘s longest jam, Echoplex and all.

“Sleep of the Black Lotus” keeps a similar vibe in its okay-this-is-the-song-and-then-we-jam-the-crap-out-of-these-riffs mentality, and though both sides are about even time-wise, the second feels longer with the two more extended tracks. Still, they make an excellent pairing even more on vinyl for being isolated from the rest of The Black Code, righteous and exploratory as they are. Whatever Wo Fat might have in store for their fifth album, and whenever it might arrive this year amid their touring first to the Northeast from Dallas and then overseas, it comes on the heels of their most accomplished full-length to-date — anyone further fiending for their fuzz should explore their 2013 split with Egypt (review here) — and for as great as The Black Code looks and sounds on wax, I can’t wait to hear how they follow it up.

Wo Fat, The Black Code (2012)

Wo Fat on Thee Facebooks

Small Stone Records

With the acknowledgement that not everyone who reads this post is going to immediately hit up The Ravenna Arsenal‘s Bandcamp page and plunk down $14 for a copy of I — which they present in limited-to-300 transparent red 180g vinyl with art by Chris Smith — let me kindly suggest that if you’re at all interested in getting a feel for what the Ohio four-piece do on their 2013 debut full-length, the thing to do is start by tossing them a couple bucks, grabbing one of the downloads of the album, and arranging the tracklisting in the order which they have it on the LP version. That’s not to discount the value of “Ammunation,” “Knights,” “The Pregnant Void” or “The Sun,” but it’s a completely different record with or without them, and that’s true both in the substance of its runtime (57 minutes with, 31 without) and in the flow from song to song. On wax, The Ravenna Arsenal‘s I is a crisp execution of progressive heavy rock that leaves the listener wanting more. In its nine-track digital entirety, it’s more complex and working with a broader sonic range, but also less efficient in establishing its emotional and sonic course.

From there, if you hear the neo-stoner metal crush of “Ultra Heavy” and how well “The Water that Covers the Sky” beefs up its Rush influence en route to the album’s apex and decide you want to hear more from the band, well, the other tracks are right there waiting for you. Seems unlikely that a single LP was The Ravenna Arsenal‘s preferred method of releasing — production costs can be a killer — but if they’d presented I with all nine cuts, it’s entirely likely that a double 12″ would’ve had trouble building a flow, because basically you’d be changing a side or record after every second song. The compromise pays dividends on the I vinyl as it is. Side A gives you a sense of the dynamic in the lineup of Ken Royer, Aaron Shay, Mike Shea, and Bill Govan and a breadth that runs from post-Mastodon lumber to a more modern alt-rock vocal style, combining them to a chugging degree in the rolling groove of “Fire Moth.” An album highlight arrives at the start of side B with the 10-minute “The Desert Shows No Mercy,” which actually arrives third in the digital version but is more effectively placed fourth on the vinyl, letting the listener more directly focus on not only I‘s longest inclusion, but also its greatest sonic achievement and most engaging sprawl, growls and slow, sludgy crush giving way to post-rock psychedelics that in turn move fluidly through a proggy build as patient as it is hypnotic.

And granted, when they get heavy again, there’s no doubt what’s coming, but the destination satisfies as much as the journey. The awaited, albeit temporary, return of vocals marks arrival at I‘s summit, and gradually The Ravenna Arsenal push downward from it, noisy, feeding back, but clearly in the finishing throes, afterthought guitar reminding of some of the heft of what preceded and what closer “The Water that Covers the Sky” must then emerge from. Placed last on the digital version as on the vinyl — though there are five tracks between “The Desert Shows No Mercy” and it digitally — “The Water that Covers the Sky” is less interested in reviving the crushing tonality of the song before than broadening the emotional range, which ultimately serves not only I as it appears on record, but the other songs as well, giving them a wider context in which to fit among the five appearing on the platter. Its subdued course is deceptively quick at over seven minutes, and ultimately manifests as a different vision of the patience The Ravenna Arsenal display on “The Desert Shows No Mercy,” their ethic allowing them to take the time to make their point properly without overdoing it on the indulgent end.

On vinyl, the limits of the production come out somewhat. The band sounds full and clear and loud, but there’s a tinny flourish on the snare in “Fire Moth” that, while I’ll take it over whatever digital sample might have replaced it, cuts through the surrounding tones perhaps more than was intended in the mixing. Minor issue in the grand scheme of the album — and the album indeed is a grand scheme — and far more prevalent is the sense that The Ravenna Arsenal will take the lessons of crafting their first outing and be able to progress with their next. A band who starts with this kind of scope rarely has any interest in repeating themselves, so I’d expect a subsequent offering to come with a personality and context of its own whatever elements present here might remain and be refined, but I makes a resounding introduction and a record I have the feeling I’m going to be even gladder to have down the line.

The Ravenna Arsenal, I (2013)

The Ravenna Arsenal on Bandcamp

The Ravenna Arsenal on Thee Facebooks

Front to back, side to side, a classic mindset pervades Get into It!, the Dec. 2013 Who Can You Trust? Records debut LP from San Francisco heavy rockers Wild Eyes. The four-piece (whose name you might see around as “Wild Eyes SF,” presumably to avoid confusion and/or litigation with another act of the same name) aren’t necessarily retro-sounding in terms of their production, but they rock with a boozy soul and brashness that I don’t think anyone would argue comes from somewhere other than the heavy ’70s, even if their touted influences of Blue Cheer, Tina Turner and Grand Funk Railroad undersell the punkish roots beneath raucous cuts like “Take Me” and “Amnesia.” Sometimes it’s a pretty fine line, but the point is Wild Eyes — vocalist Janiece Gonzalez, guitarist Chris Corona, bassist Carson Binks (also of Saviours) and now-former drummer Jesse Thompson, since replaced by Ben Richardson — aren’t just copping Leslie West riffs and calling it a revolution on their first outing.

Rather, the album — pressed to sleek black 180g vinyl in an edition of 500 with a thick, textured-feeling sleeve — gives its swagger a modern presentation thanks to production by Phil Manley that captures the natural bluesy grooves well without coming across too slick, just a hint of ’80s metal bleeding into “1725,” which caps side A following the initial one-two punch of “Get into It!” and “Amnesia,” which boast the strongest hooks here. The three songs on side A are by and large catchier than the four on side B — “Demons Out,” the Tony Joe White cover “Groupy Girl,” “Warrior Cry” and closer “Take Me” — but though it’s very much a B-side, the second half of Get into It! leaves an impression more complex in its mood than “Get into It!” and “Amnesia,” which delight in chemical revelry of various sorts, drinking, smoking, whathaveyou. Fun. Loud, piss-drunk fun. You can almost hear Gonzalez calling you “dude” in the chorus of “Get into It!,” and that vibe works much to the record’s advantage.

For all her tales of waking up with strangers and getting smashed for the hell of it, Gonzalez is a top notch vocalist and has a considerable presence even on record as the frontwoman of the band. Binks and Thompson hold down loose-swinging burrow-into-your-head grooves to go with Corona’s riffing and soloing — “Demons Out” is just waiting to fuck you up — but it’s Gonzalez who handles the emotional crux of the record, and as she tops acoustic guitar with a thoughtful take toying with generational and gender perceptions in “Groupy Girl,” it results in a deepening of the album’s overarching affect. Though they switch up the arrangement some, that song blends more or less seamlessly with Wild Eyes‘ general modus, and the closing duo of “Warrior Cry” and “Take Me” bring back some of the lively push of Get into It!‘s beginnings, sounding all the more soulful for the movement into and through “Groupy Girl,” which was likely the idea the whole time.

Corona is apt to rip into a killer lead, and Binks is apt to rise to the occasion in tossing in a bluesy fill, and while the song structures are more or less straightforward, there remains an element of danger in Wild Eyes‘ approach that gives the tracks a fresh feeling despite being so purposefully classic in their intent. It’s a relatively familiar scenario of strong parts coming together as a stronger whole, and though “Take Me” backtracks on some of the agency in “Amnesia” — it’s “Take me/Take me to your place” instead of “I got amnesia/Don’t remember meeting ya” — its blues rocking push makes a fitting end to the album as a whole, basking in proto-heavy push with a sense of realization that comes through all the more on multiple listens. I shudder to think what righteousness might occur should anyone in the band become introduced to the Hammond organ — the humanity! — but even without, Get into It!‘s urging is well heeded.

Wild Eyes, Get into It! (2013)

Wild Eyes on Thee Facebooks

Wild Eyes on Bandcamp

Who Can You Trust? Records

Who Can You Trust? store