Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper (2015)

If you ever wondered, how it would have sounded, if Black Sabbath and the Beatles got merged together in some weird teleportation or cloning accident, Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats' The Night Creeper might give you the answer: Imagine Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds played with heavy riffing guitars, eery, distorted vocals and repetitive, hypnotic grooves. A gloomy psychedelic nightmare you may find, you can't get enough from.

Thematically, the album revolves around the eponymous Night Creeper, a Jack-the-Ripper-style serial killer. And it does it brilliantly. The way it transports its distinctive 60s-psychedelica-atmosphere, like an expressionist horror film inside your head. The haunting vocals, the Sabbath-like chord progressions and the very retro production - everything just plays together just brilliantly, creating a truly unique experience.

This said, Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats is certainly not everyone's taste and if you are into more conventional, or simply more modern metal, you might not enjoy them too much - for all the reasons mentioned above!

To me, Uncle Acid are one of the most significant discoveries in the recent years. Retro-doom at its finest, with a lot of emotional impact and their own, unique character. Not an easy thing to achieve, but they delivered brilliantly.

Devil Electric (2017)

Devil Electric are a recent discovery of mine. As the name and the cover picture of their debut album suggest, they are another example of the ever-growing Black-Sabbath-inspired, female-fronted proto-doom-occult rock genre. Phew, what a word! And while they certainly don't reinvent the wheel (or their genre), the quartet from Australia knows how to make some excellent, gloomy music.

On the instrumental side, Devil Electric are indeed closely resembling early Black Sabbath. With a lot of heavy,  fuzzy guitar, riffing on doomy intervals and accompanied by a rhythm section that stomps along like an iron behemoth with an impeccable sense of groove in its hulking limbs. So far, so good! Nothing revolutionary, but a very compelling performance. The really outstanding part however, that adds so much character to the band, is its vocalist.

With her bright, light-footed voice she often appears to dance above all the growling, heaviness the band unleashes. The result is - by all the contrast she adds to the sound - a nevertheless quite symbiotic feel, with interesting changes in rhythm and dynamics. It is this dance of contrasts that keeps Devil Electric, contrary to all the familiarity of their songs, varied and engaging - and a little bit unpredictable too. Very effective.

All in all, a strong debut with a lot of 60s- and 70s vibe. It could be the ideal soundtrack to a Hammer film. With misty graveyards, scantly clad witches and generous amounts of blood. Given the number of similar acts I sometimes wish they would stray away from the established, clichéd Black Sabbath-sound a bit more and experiment a bit more with their own style. The potential is certainly there.

Jess and the Ancient Ones - The Horse and Other Weird Tales (2017)

Regular readers might have noticed that, besides metal and hard/heavy rock, I also have a soft spot for music from the 70s, psychedelic in particular. And it seems like Jess and the Ancient Ones did their best to push my buttons in that regard.

The album is quite a remarkable experience. Stylisticly somewhere between The Doors and retro-occult-rock like Blood Ceremony, The Horse and Other Weird Tales is colourful, organic and beautifully arranged, with some truly captivating songwriting.

 On top of it all vocalist Jess, who is transporting so much pure energy with her dynamic and engaging singing without sacrificing melody. Was her performance on their first record often quite shouty, on The Horse and Other Weird Tales she sounds so much more refined and in command and in the best sense of the word haunting. Dramatic changes in mood, tempo and rhythms - her performance is really outstanding.

If there is one thing to complain about, and I am happy to say there is only one thing actually, then that it just feels too short. The overall runtime is only 34 minutes and most of the songs are just between two and three and a half minutes long, leaving you craving for more. I certainly would not blame a lack of ideas here. To the contrary. The songs are so rich that most of them could easily be twice as long and still entertain me splendidly.
But maybe its better this way. Maybe they want their listeners to stay hungry for more than having a profound lack of ideas dragged out over 20 tracks and 70 minutes, as it happens too often.

All in all a brilliant piece of psychedelic rock with an outstanding singer. A bit too short, but then again - that doesn't takes anything away from all the goodness that's there!