Veneralia includes 6 substantial tracks, “suites”, ranging between 6 and a half and almost 12 minutes in length. If such length make you scared, don’t worry. The heavy rocking trio in Electric Taurus know how to keep you busy with a vortex of juicy riffs and lots of surprises stemming from their personal elaboration of the Masters’ teaching. The opener “Mountains” will immediately introduce you to a cool feature of the band’s style: the impressive pulsating bass line. I don’t know if it came out by chance or it was done on purpose during mastering/production but in this album the bass line is always rather loud. It seems to be enhanced over the rest, even over the vocal parts. I personally dig this effect quite a lot and I find it effectively imparts a tridimensional effect to the overall sound even if maybe the vocal parts may sound a bit suppressed. However Matt’s gritty voice is powerful and these “imperfections” are cool and retain a retro freshness.
Going back to the tunes, in this first track and elsewhere the retro rock vibe is always dominant. “Mountains” is rocking hard and doomy as if Witchcraft were going southern. A charming and tricky acoustic inset with strained vocals will eventually give way to some yummi bluesy riffing in the vein of Clutch that will close the ballad. Track “ A New Moon” is a great, Hendrixian, fuzz-laden doom rock track lead by some cool highly distorted riffing. Really cool!
“Mescalina/If/At the Edge of the Earth”, the longest track, is one of the most surprising and charming tracks of the album. It features a peculiar, long and dark trippy intro driven by a way charming jazzy bass line with which delicate touches of spacey “noise” interplay and progressively build up while sounds of waves are heard in the background. All this sounds to me like the evocation of a night under the moonshine along a shore with a calm sea populated by mysterious, curious creatures not to be seen. Why the sea? After about 4 minutes of this dark and haunting ambience the time comes for a surge of multifaceted, distorted heavy riffs. After a first serve of “fat”, southern-flavoured rock vibes, these guys will employ their highly distorted and downtuned guitars for knitting some ultra classic, old-style rock’n’roll riffs à-la-Bill Haley, smoothly merging to Witchcraft-like retro-blues occult doom rock, “trve” sabbathian doom, and eventually some retro folk and acoustic psych prog peacefully dying away. This long suite seems like a trip into the sounds of the past from which we all, metallers and rockers, come from. A hommage to the sea of “old” rock in the widest meaning, something essential and “ancestral”, yet in continuous evolution (like the sea) and where, sooner or later, we get back to as it is in our DNA.
After the atmospheres in “Mescalina/If/At the Edge of the Earth”, let’s go back to the rude rock’n’roll macho men with track “Two Gods/Caput Algol”. The classic testosterone, alcoholic raaaawk onset of this song will be like your dusty boot on the starter pedal of your chopper. There’s nothing to do, with Electric Taurus you’ll end up driving a chrome-plated beast with your big moustache, dusty boots, dark glasses and long hairs in the wind under the heat of the desert. Never mind if there is a pale winter sun outside or you are in the middle of an Irish rainy day! In “Two Gods/Caput Algol” riffs are not too fast but they are boosted, they are catchy yet develop according to interesting patterns. Here as well guitarist and bassist won’t be able to stick to a genre and will soon deviate into different sounds. The excellent drummer will run after them consequently. But there will always be that awesome bass line leading.
Track “Prelude To The Madness” is another surprising one for its crazy contrasts. The slow, dark, frankly doomy and gruesome start is so cheating! But like with a magic hat, hop, you’ve got some flamboyant Pentagram/Bigelf-styled hippy retro doom rock bursting before plunging back into slow grimness and darkness. And on it goes like in a sickening seesaw until everything gets swirled into a tornado-like space psych jamming backed by an amazing combination of bass plus drumming. There any musician seems to follow apparently independent, braided patterns. Is it total anarchy or total chemistry among these musicians? Well, eventually you’ll find yourself howling together with the guitar like a coyote greeting the moon.
The last track, “Magic Eye”, is a slab of fuzzy and raw heavy/stoner rock lead, more than ever, by James’ seismic bass line. There might also be touches of enjoyable retro funky vibe, especially at the beginning, where I caught a hint of Calibro 35-like retro sounds. Useless to say, the band will close this kickass track, and their album, by making their guitar howl like Jimmy Page’s … How can you resist?
Get your Veneralia CD from Electric Taurus’ Bandcamp merch page or from other dealers (e.g., Ozium Records). And play it loud …
Words: Marilena Moroni
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Videos
Electric Taurus - Prelude To Madness
Electric Taurus – The New Moon