After releasing the well-received II last year through R.A.I.G., Russian genrenauts The Grand Astoria make a quick return with their third album, Omnipresence. Self-released and stretching to nearly a full-hour despite paring down song lengths from last time out, Omnipresence finds the St. Petersburg four-piece joined by a host of guests, paying tribute to Ray Bradbury (who shows up in the liner art), and managing at different times to play to their noisy strengths while also reaching beyond the limitations of stoner or heavy rock with funk and jam-based experimentation. Omnipresence has moments that work and moments that don’t, but as a band, The Grand Astoria are quickly growing into their sound, and their third offering documents that process well.

They’ve since lost their rhythm section, but guitarists Kamille Sharapodinov (also vocals) and Igor Suvorov are leading the charge on Omnipresence anyway, crisscrossing into and out of conventionality with ease unnerving for a band still so young, having just formed two years ago. Their restless nature shows off the bat with the stoner punk of opener “Doomsday Party,” in which Sharapodinov, Suvorov, then-bassist Farid Azizov and then-drummer Nick Kunavin are right in their element. Sharapodinov’s vocals on “Doomsday Party” and several of the more upbeat Omnipresence tracks remind of the blown-out feel Hank Williams III used on the earliest Assjack demos, but I’d imagine that’s more coincidence — and the effect is by no means exclusive to him, it’s just that with the quick tempo and punk feel, that’s what comes to my mind first. Azizov and Kunavin provide well-placed backing vocals on the opener and a few of the later tracks, including “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and “Rat Race in Moscow,” two of the strongest songs on the album.

At their strongest, The Grand Astoria bite off a piece of Fu Manchu’s hardcore roots and make it their own, and some of Omnipresence shows that. “Hungry and Foolish,” which follows “Doomsday Party,” has formidable and unabashed stoner rock groove, but some of the spacier ideas that came to the fore on II show themselves in the echoey instrumental “Omniabsence,” which follows “Mania Grandiosa” (probably Sharapodinov’s best vocal here) and sets up the centerpiece section of the album. Its hypnotic affect is considerable – a four-minute trip into an alternate sonic galaxy – but if anything is going to snap the listener back to awareness, it’s the catchy “Rat Race in Moscow.” The vocals are high in the mix (I always think that, so take it with a grain of salt), but if The Grand Astoria were ever right to want to feature the chorus, it’s here. The track opens with a big rock finish and gives perhaps a more playful take on some of the punk influence shown earlier on in Omnipresence’s starting moments.

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