Cheers to whoever runs the Deadly Vipers video editing department. I suppose it’s not that crazy for a tour to end and a good-times-we-had video to surface a couple weeks later, but the French four-piece were out at the end of March alongside Fuzzorama Records imprint heads Truckfighters (from Sweden, if it needs to be said) and Wizzerd for a multinational stint supporting their late-2022 album, Low City Drone (review here), the three labelmate acts rolling through Germany, Austria and the Netherlands as one will. And while I don’t know if they made the clip themselves in terms of actually putting the footage together, having such a project to work on would be a decent way to beat the post-tour blues, if in fact that’s the case.
Either way, it’s a welcome check-in from the Perpignan outfit in addition to a reminder/herald for the album. You can see the tour was a good time and the crowds showed up and that’s all fine, but the song brings to the forefront the strengths of the band in terms of craft and presentation, the songwriting wholly embracing a desert rock style while keeping the production full and modern. Maybe that doesn’t sound so off-the-wall on paper, but on “Last Rise” and throughout the record they bring freshness of perspective to the tenets of genre without coming across as too derivative or needing to mask their influences by superfluous arrangement elements. Solid, fuzzy, engaging heavy rock. You’ll pardon me if I don’t argue with it.
The video follows here and the album stream is down near the bottom of the post. You know the drill.
Please enjoy:
Deadly Vipers, “Last Rise” official video
Deadly Vipers did a video to the song ‘Last Rise’ with material from their European tour spring 2023 supporting Truckfighters.
Posted in Reviews on December 27th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
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.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 12th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Based in Perpignon, in Southern France, heavy psych four-piece Deadly Vipers have locked in a September release for their new album, Low City Drone, through Fuzzorama Records. The label, which has kind of paired Deadly Vipers with Montana’s Wizzerd in terms of release and promotional timing — that is to say, I’ve got a news post about Wizzerd‘s new record coming in September as well to put together — has posted the rolling closing track, “Big Empty,” from Low City Drone to coincide with the release announcement and the unveiling of the album cover, which you can see below.
“Big Empty,” which would seem to be about space — only 0.0000000000000000000042 percent matter, according to the internet — but actually puts a call out in the lyrics for the emergence of a ‘new mankind.’ Obviously this pulls my head right into the lore of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry’s novelizations of “new humans” and all that. I imagine most will have other associations, but one way or the other, the track unfolds patiently toward a relatively quick apex, holding back some of the heft that showed up earlier in the previously-posted title-track, which ran nine minutes and can also be heard at the bottom of this post.
Because I like music. And words. So here’s words and there’s music. See why I might spend my time doing this?
From the PR wire:
Fuzzorama Records to release DEADLY VIPERS – Low City Drone in September
New Single ‘Big Empty’ released and available on digital platforms: YouTube (Lyric Video), Spotify/Itunes etc.
Real debauchery of decibels!
Deadly Vipers distills an effective fuzzy rock, without frills, thanks to the richness of the compositions, all made possible by grooves as catchy as they are devastating.
The band offer a personal vision of the genre, where the riff is the fuel that powers interstellar engines, actors of a journey from the desert expanses to the ends of the universe.
New album ‘Low City Drone’ is their own vision of the future/past, a dystopian tale about the humanity last breath and an utopian hope about the reconstruction after the end. Watch out for drones coming from above, they are listening to what is being said below…
Tracklisting: 1. Echoes From Wasteland 2. Atom 3. Low City Drone 4. Welli Welloo 5. Meteor Part II 6. Last Rise 7. Ego Trip 8. Big Empty
