Full Album Premiere & Review: Fire Down Below, Low Desert Surf Club
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on September 7th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream Fire Down Below’s Low Desert Surf Club in its entirety. Album is out tomorrow, Sept. 8, on Ripple Music.]
Immediate cowbell. On a song called “Cocaine Hippo,” no less. If you’re looking for a way to convey energy, movement, motivation for the listener to get of their ass, that’s a fitting way to go, and indeed how Ghent, Belgium’s Fire Down Below lead off their third album, with an intro that communes directly with Queens of the Stone Age‘s “Millionaire” and a hook that backs it with a rhythmic push that would make Fu Manchu smile. Along with that cowbell, then, is the immediacy of communion with California desert/heavy rock, and particularly that of the 1990s and the turn of the century, circa 2000-’03.
Comprised of guitarists Kevin Gernaey (lead) and Jeroen Van Troyen (also vocals), bassist Bert Wynsberghe and drummer Sam Nuytens, the band offer nine songs across 57 minutes of material, and even that feels like a reference to the CD era, and it’s nearly 15 minutes longer than was 2018’s Hymn of the Cosmic Man (review here), much of which can be accounted for in the 16:06 closer “Mantra.”
That’s the longest song the band have ever made — though both Hymn of the Cosmic Man and their 2017 debut, Viper Vixen Goddess Saint, passed 11 minutes in their respective finales — and in seven-minute cuts “Surf Queen” and the catchy-as-all-get-out “Here Comes the Flood,” and the six-minute heavy psych lean of “Hazy Snake” with some Elderian shimmer in its lead guitar that feels well placed since Nick DiSalvo (guitar/vocals in Elder, Delving, drums in Weite, etc.) produced with engineering by Richard Behrens (he’s the guy in Berlin; front-of-house for Kadavar, was in Samsara Blues Experiment, has recorded tons of bands, on and on), they explore outer reaches around the perimeter of the straightforward heavy rock and roll of songs like “Cocaine Hippo,” “California” and “Airwolf” in the initial salvo or “Dune Buggy” and “The Last Cowboy, which are positioned to offset the longer pieces.
All of this — the titular delve into surf for the first half of “Surf Queen” before it gets into a more open, jammier stretch and circles back to the hook, the pure desert worship and escapism of “California,” the ecological impossibility of lines like “Surfing through the desert, I ride a wave/There’s a lady dressed in white who knows my name” in “Cocaine Hippo,” and so on — results in a full-length of marked flow and varied sounds built around its central, heavily-fuzzed ideology. Most of all it feels like a celebration.
One that feels well earned, given the five years between Hymn of the Cosmic Man and Low Desert Surf Club. And if these songs are something of a breakout moment for Fire Down Below, a realization of who they are as a group and the things they want to honor in their music, then that’s the manifestation of a heart-on-sleeve approach they’ve had all along. Heavy rock by heavy rockers; Fire Down Below sound like fans of the style they’re playing.
The low-rolling post-Kyussism of “Airwolf” and the similarly sourced shove of “The Last Cowboy” in the penultimate spot — crucial there for regrounding from “Hazy Snake” and ending on a gentle fade in its solo ahead of the sprawling “Mantra” — and the fact that the centerpiece is the sand-boogie of “Dune Buggy,” named for vehicle that might cruise through the desert à la Truckfighters and serves as a getaway car here, makes forehead-slapping sense considering the return of the cowbell, the drive of the chorus and that last charge that pays off its mini-build. On a level of fans communicating their love for this specific thing to its specific community, the dogwhistles and references abound and converts will find themselves smiling in recognition as the funky swing in the first movement of “Mantra” unfolds with its Brant Bjork hat on, so much go-go-go throughout resolved inevitably, correctly, at an unshakable altar of cool.
If “Surf Queen” ends side A of the 2LP and “The Last Cowboy” wraps side B, and side D is etched, that leaves “Mantra” hanging alone on side C. Will listeners to the vinyl swap platters for one song, even one as substantial as that? Does anyone actually listen to vinyl other than to take pictures for social media? I don’t know. Depends on the listener, obviously, but “Mantra” earns its standalone place, feeling at least partially improvised around its central riff in the early going, digging into mellower Kyuss circa …And the Circus Leaves Town in its wavy-guitar structured midsection before the swinging, hot-shit strut verse riff kicks in and the festival set begins the trek to its peak.
At about 8:30, the vocals depart and the band smoothly — so, so smoothly; gracefully — begin to sidestep into another mostly-instrumental stretch, still holding some of the early funk and classic style, but seeming to inhale before they dive into Low Desert Surf Club‘s actual finish. I don’t know the process through which “Mantra” was made, whether it was different parts recorded and assembled after the fact, jammed-out live in the studio, or what, but I enjoy how little it seems to matter to the actual listening experience, which fulfills the immersion that “Here Comes the Flood” teased and is atmospheric without hyperintellectualizing aesthetic and thus undercutting the passion fueling it. It’s a win, is what I’m saying.
And its ending, for which the vocals briefly return, hits its mark and calms down, highlighting the intimacy between Fire Down Below and their subject matter. This is not desert rock by happenstance; it’s desert rock as a lifestyle. It’s tattooed desert rock. And I guess there are still people who think desert rock has to come from a desert. Okay. Does everyone who plays death metal have to die? Regardless of the absurdity of that position, Low Desert Surf Club basks in its all-in nature as regards genre, and a good portion of the character of the album comes from the obvious love and passion with which it was made. Also the riffs. And the songs. And the tone. And and and…
