Whilst it is true that with all the bobbins associated with Covid-19, whilst some individual days may well drag, for me, who has been fortunate enough to be working full time and getting drowned in overtime, the last two years have passed pretty damn quickly. Something that really brought that home was the fact that when the new CD from Oslo based Superlynx, ‘Electric Temple’ popped through my letterbox I was amazed to discover that it was two whole years since I reviewed their prior release ‘New Moon’ (see Ave Noctum passim). Has much changed since that last release? Well, firstly, I’m glad to say the phrase “female fronted” is fading into the history of metal; secondly, as for the music, read on gentle reader, read on.
‘Rising Flame’ opens the album in a slow crawl of trippily plucked notes and siren singing, floating from the speakers like the smoke from a hookah in a cliched cinematic sheik’s pleasure palace; even as I listen to the track whilst typing on a sunny afternoon I can only imagine the impact the song would have in a darkened club, stage lit up only by a sixties oil lamp show, and find myself drifting away. The quality continues unabated with title track ‘Electric Temple’, the looping hypnotic riff conjuring up a dusty Eastern souk with each chord and minimalistic percussive beat, Pia Isaksen’s vocals tracing a direct lineage from, and paying homage to the pioneering Grace Slick from her Jefferson Airplane days. After the first two meandering tracks, ‘Apocalypse’ seems almost indecently short at a sub three-minute running time, albeit the psychedelic delivery makes it seem so much longer even as the instruments build up in pace through the track like a burgeoning storm before becalming itself on Pia’s closing lines.
The band’s homage to the hippy stalked streets of Haight-Ashbury is further explored in ‘Moonbather’, the song and lyrics equal parts acid rock and Hindu mantra, a combination that would make a long-haired George Harrison happy were he alive to hear it. After the short instrumental interlude of ‘Sonic Sacrament’, ‘Returning Light’ continues the band’s laconic travel through inner space and exploration of the astral plane, at the same time drawing on imagery of sun worship that is universal to religions both Eastern and Western, the music likewise fusing primal percussive beats with modern electric guitar sounds. The worship of the Mother Earth/Gaia threads through every word and note of ‘Laws of Nature’, Pia’s vocals being layered to create pastoral harmonies, before the album takes an altogether darker turn with ‘Then You Move’, multi-instrumentalist Ole Teigen shouldering some of the vocal duties like a gothic Lou Reed, the guitars of Daniel Bakken taking on a dark country twang that would happily have accompanied Johnny Cash in his later days. The half-spoken delivery of ‘Siren Song’ over sparsely delivered piano stabs evokes a world weary Leonard Cohen, before Superlynx close out the album with ‘May’, the stomping rhythms and chant like vocals conjuring the shamanic spirit of Jim Morrison with its combination of music and mysticism.
‘Electric Temple’ is a near faultless homage to the period when titans like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin bestrode the musical landscape, but fully incorporating the darkness that befell the scene as those same figureheads fell foul of the pitfalls of hedonism. The often used, and frankly overused phrase “dark beauty” could have been first invented to try and encapsulate the sound of the band and the development and maturity that Superlynx has on display since their last album can only bode well for their future releases.
(8.5/10 Spenny)
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