New York instrumentalists Clouds Taste Satanic release their new album, Berlin 2023 tomorrow, March 6. The four-track/38-minute outing follows behind last February’s Birmingham 2024, and was similarly recorded live in the studio, which in this case was Berlin’s famed Big Snuff Studio, where the band worked with Nene Baratto (Ajeet “Hellfire” Gill, who recorded the Birmingham LP, also mixed and mastered here). And one imagines that for the band the locale was part of the draw; Big Snuff, as a place, has birthed more than a few influential albums along the way from bands like Elder, Kadavar, Samsara Blues Experiment and an array of others. Clouds Taste Satanic were in Europe that May hitting Esbjerg Fuzztival in Denmark and other points of interest, so why not a stopover to nail down a set and make a live-in-studio album?

You’ll get no argument out of me with the results across Berlin 2023. Part of me feels like this is how Clouds Taste Satanic should record all the time — write songs, go someplace cool, track live — but (1:) I don’t know that they don’t and (2:) it’s not my business to tell anybody how to do what they do. But as they make their way through the side-A-consuming, multi-stage title-piece from 2019’s Second Sight (review here) starts, with its three clear movements playing out fluidly in just under 19 minutes, dug-in feeling and jammy but never deviating from the plotted course of the song itself. That is to say, just because it’s taking up the whole side has never meant that Clouds Taste Satanic don’t know exactly where they’re headed. These are songs. That’s what makes them reproduceable.

Big Snuff always been able to give songs a sense of expanse, and unsurprisingly that’s true of “Second Sight” as well, but Clouds Taste Satanic aren’t looking to be tricky. The largesse is inherent in their tones, and what you hear across Berlin 2023, as “Sun Death Ritual Pts. I-III” from 2023’s Tales of Demonic Possession (review here) digs into its chug and solo-topped swing in its first half, is organic in sound and chemistry. The latter is what really stands out, in “Sun Death Ritual Pts. I-III,” which at 10 minutes is more condensed than “Second Sight” but still longer than “Spirits of the Green Desert Pt. IV” (also from Tales of Demonic Possession) and “Beast From the Sea,” with which it shares the B-side, and maybe that’s a result of the band stepping into the studio right from the road, but as the solo gives over to the thudding and twisty pulls later on, the transitions are seamless, unforced, natural. The exploratory lead guitar provides atmosphere rather than replacing vocal patterns, whereas with “Spirits of the Green Desert Pt. IV,” some dirtier distortion provides the revelry. But anywhere they go, Clouds Taste Satanic make themselves comfortable with groove by the heapful.

Closer “Beast From the Sea” is sourced from 2015’s Your Doom Has Come, and has more space in its echoing forward guitar line, with a bouncing procession coinciding that’s more Pelican than Karma to Burn, but still keeping to the trajectory of the song’s comparatively quick payoff. If they were closing sets with that on the tour, it would make sense, but I don’t know that either way. It works here, though, and ‘works’ should be considered high praise for a band who are much more daring in sound than they ever make it seem. You put on Clouds Taste Satanic and all of a sudden it doesn’t seem weird that an almost pointedly straightforward outfit can just carry you across two vinyl sides in long- or shortform style, sounding exploratory without once veering from where they want to be. It’s not a feat every band would or could pull off, but Clouds Taste Satanic make every song sound like an absolute given, and the nuances in what they do are more accessible for that.

Berlin 2023 is reportedly the second in a series of three, so it and Birmingham 2024 will apparently have more company in their place-and-time presentation. Can’t argue, and both for the band making the memory of doing the thing and for listeners hearing another side of them live in the studio, I hope they do something like this every time they tour. Would be silly not to, pending time, money and so on.

The album streams in full on the player below, followed by more from the PR wire.

Please enjoy:

Clouds Taste Satanic on Berlin 2023:

We want these “Live in Studio” sessions to give the listener an honest representation of the songs we played and what we sounded like on that particular tour. If you came to a show, this is a reminder. If you couldn’t make it, this is what you missed.

CLOUDS TASTE SATANIC will release a new full-length album on March 6, titled Berlin 2023, the second installment in the band’s “Live in Studio” series. Recorded at Big Snuff Studios in Berlin in May 2023, the album is a no-overdub, live-in-the-room document of the band’s European tour setlist from that year, capturing their sound at its most raw, direct, and immediate.

Berlin 2023 will be available on yellow vinyl, CD, digital download, and streaming, and features Berlin-inspired artwork by Simon Berndt. Their eleventh album, Birmingham 2024, was released on February 7, 2025 as Volume 1 in the Live in Studio series, with Berlin 2023 continuing this focused and unfiltered exploration of the band’s formidable live power.

Tracklisting:
1. Second Sight (18:50)
2. Sun Death Ritual Pts. I-III (10:09)
3. Spirits of the Green Desert Pt. IV (4:22)
4. Beast From the Sea (4:40)

Line-up:
Steve Scavuzzo – Guitar
Rob Halstead – Bass
Greg Acampora – Drums
Brian Bauhs – Guitar

Clouds Taste Satanic on Bandcamp

Clouds Taste Satanic on Facebook

Clouds Taste Satanic on Instagram