Psych rock fans have reason to celebrate with Friday's release of "Invisible Wormhole" from one of Fuzzy's favorite bands, MELLOW BEAST! Readers of my blog will remember my previous reviews of Mellow Beast's debut "Hyperion" and its coneptual follow-up "The Tale of Sir Gregory." Friday's release continues the with Mellow Beast's mastery of late 60s psychedelia, but begins a new story about what lurks in a wormhole behind the moon. And in terms of musical textures and variety, this has to be the band's best album yet (and that's saying something). Listen to "Invisible Wormhole" by Mellow Beast on Bandcamp (with the full album to be released October 29):  

Get ready for Halloween with the heavy doom riffs of the upcoming debut EP from FOG GIANT. This S/T delivers 5 songs which truly deserve to be called "sabbath worship" with their low & slow tones, fuzzed-out riffs, and pummeling drum lines. Listen to Fog Giant EP on Bandcamp:

"Sky Burial" is a strong opener, and fires a salvo of stoner doom across your brain as it fires off what Fog Giant has to offer. 

"Sesspool" takes it nearly instrumental, and the vocals don't kick in until the end. I'm digging the burning, chugging riffs on this one.

The eponymous track "Fog Giant" keeps the barge of destruction sailing towards its destruction. I gotta say, I love it when a band has a song using the name of the band as the title! This one is certified dark and sinister. 

"Riff Wizard" is the pre-release track which you can listen to right now on Bandcamp, and if you dig it, then you are going to want to hear the full album at its release on Halloween.

The album ends with a cover of Uriah Heep's "Rainbow Demon" that delivers vocals on par with the original. Well done!

Fog Giant EP delivers 5 tracks and nearly 30 minutes of sabbath worship, and that's more than enough to set the mood at your Halloween party. 

The album is available for pre-order now on Bandcamp at https://foggiant.bandcamp.com/ with the full release on Halloween. Be sure to check out the CD, too!

Fuzzy's Favorite: Toss-up between "Riff Wizard" and "Rainbow Demon" but this whole beast is excellent, so just hit PLAY at the start and let it play on repeat. 

Fog Giant band is from Erie, PA with members: 

• Andrew Vickery - vocals, guitar
• Steve Anthony - guitar
• Matt Barthelmes - bass
• Zach Hudock - drums

From the band: 

We're a stoner-doom quartet from Erie, Pennsylvania, and I feel like it's pretty solidly in your wheelhouse; heavy, smoke-filled riffs, walls of citrus-flavored amplifiers, cautionary tales of psychedelics and wizards.

Follow FOG GIANT on Bandcamp at https://foggiant.bandcamp.com and check out the CD, too.

SPACELORD drops their new album "False Dawn" on November 5, and you can catch a few of the tracks right now on Bandcamp. This duo from New York will blow your mind with their unique blend of desert rock and heavy psych. A lot of time and effort went into these songs, and the result is an album full of heavy riffs and mellow melodies. Listen to the pre-release tracks from Spacelord's "False Dawn" on Bandcamp:

Spacelord is a band that takes the best of my favorite bands and rolls them into one killer album. One track has me thinking, "Yea this would have been a killer Zeppelin tune" and then the next has me wishing Soundgarden had never broken up. Don't get me wrong -- I'm definitely NOT saying that there is anything derivative here. Spacelord's songs are inspired by the same music that all of us love, and the result is original and amazing. Some of the songs are heavier, some are slower, and all of them are killer stoner tunes. There have been a lot of great releases these past few months, and Spacelord's "False Dawn" is definitely among the best of them!

The full album release is on November 5 and is available for pre-order now at https://spacelordband.bandcamp.com/album/false-dawn

From the band: 

False Dawn draws together the band's many influences, from 70s acid rock like Zeppelin and Sabbath to the dark, heavy sound of Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. "Some of the music was written in the days and weeks that followed the death of my brother, while some others were concepts I had wanted to explore for a long while," said guitarist Rich Root. "We're taking the personal impressions of all of our influences and amalgamating them into something that makes us feel like the music we love makes us feel."

I asked the band to tell me about the cover art (which I find to be amazing!) and here's what they told me: 

We kicked around a bunch of art direction ideas, but we didn't have a clear vision, we were just looking for something that might inspire us. There were several artists we considered working with, and we found some amazing museum photography of ancient artifacts that might have worked. In the meantime, I was messing around with this program called Artbreeder. Artbreeder uses something called a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to "learn" what different types of images should look like, and which ones look best. Users then collaborate with the program by setting the parameters or mixing different images or types of images together. It has an album art setting, which is what gave me the idea to go in this direction. There were some promising images from our early experiments (I've attached an example here),

Early version of the album cover by Artbreeder

but the problem is, Artbreeder knows albums have word-like shapes on the covers. But it doesn't know what words actually are, so when it generates album art it creates these weird cryptoglyphs in place of the band name and album title. We'd have to either incorporate them into our concept or just put our text over them. In the end we weren't happy with what we got out of the program. Then I started playing with Artbreeder's landscape setting. By going through several iterations, it started to learn what kind of fantastical, surreal visions I liked best. When we got this one, it was instantly clear we had a winner. So this album cover is actually a crop of a wider landscape. There's also an alternate version of it that could serve as the back cover if we're ever able to do a vinyl run of False Dawn.

Spacelord is from New York with members 

• Vocals, guitar: Ed Grabianowski 
• Guitars, bass, drum conjuring: Rich Root

Follow SPACELORD on Bandcamp at https://spacelordband.bandcamp.com 

Fuzzy missed a great release from earlier this year, so let's catch up with KENTUCKY GREEN and their debut album "Galactic Acid". These guys sound straight out of 70s Alabama (or should I say, Kentucky?), despite actually be from Australia. Heavy riffs, killer vocals, epic drumming, and over 50 minutes of high octane music. Listen to Galactic Acid by Kentucky Green on Bandcamp:

Kentucky Green really grooves in a tight formation, so I'm guessing they've played together a lot since their formation in 2019.  When a band plays together this well, it's not really necessary to point out any member in particular, but I gotta say, some of the guitar solos are just epic, and the drumming on here is completely badass. 

Part of the success of this album lies in its recording. It was recorded live, and with great production quality, so we get the energy of a live performance without compromising the sound. 

Did I already mention is album clocks in at 50 minutes? And it's totally solid throughout. With this many songs, any band would be forgiven for having a few weaker tracks, but Kentucky Green deliver the goods every time. 

Fuzzy's Favorite: "Judas Goat" captures the band's heavy rocking sound, guitar solos, and inspired drum work. 

From the band: 

Kentucky Green are a Brisbane based three-piece rock band formed in 2019. Alternately described as "Stoner Blues" and "Doom Prog", we combine the de-tuned riffage of Kyuss and Sleep with the 70's rock of Sabbath, Budgie and Mountain and add a dash of Rush/Yes prog rock to create our own blistering musical stew.