Phi

The album kicks in with the track "atomic;" a fuzzy opening riff before breaking in with John Garcia style vocals. Its stoner rock paint by numbers the riffs are present and accounted for and makes for a promising opening to the album. "Fortyeight" is mid tempo affair with a good little groove to it. The intervals between the singing has nice little breakdowns. "Kickdown" carries on much the same way. The riffs are reminiscent of KYUSS and NEBULA. "Chameleon" takes things a step further lasting over ten minutes. The song moves along at a slow pace. It's a pleasant song with mellower sections before breaking back with the fuzzy wall of noise and picking up the pace about half way through. It then ends on relaxing string section part. At times it was losing my interest, but still a solid song. "Dysthymia" is one of the mellowest tracks on the album distracting from the hard rocking of the rest of the album. "Slacken" gets things back on track with one of the most infectious openings of the album. "Slacken" pretty much flows into the next track "warhead". "Warhead" is just an instrumental jam that isn't adding much to the album. It's just a filler track to get the album up the acceptable 10 song point. "Traffic" has a slight eastern vibe about the opening of the song. Track 9 will either be "slides" if you have the EU release of the album. "Slides" is another instrumental jam that blurs into the rest of the album. The album is winding down now as we reach the final song "The game" which raps up the album well enough.The album is all solid stoner fodder. The first half contains most of the strongest songs with the instrumentals and weaker songs on the second half not really adding much. The weaker songs aside it's still a good release. It may not be up there with KYUSS "welcome to sky valley," but then QOTSA aren't producing music on that quality anymore either so it's a good effort. Basically whether you like this album will come down to whether you object to hearing another band that sounds exactly like KYUSS, FU MANCHU or NEBULA or the many other countless stoner that were products of KYUSS and MONSTER MAGNET. Personally it's a welcome album as I'd rather hear this than hear another poor quality metal core band or poor quality band claiming to be bringing thrash back. But you have be warned this doesn't score any points for originality but it is packed with enough fuzzy riffs and groovy tunes to make up for it.