Philadelphia’s Heavy Temple is a band that my one prior musical encounter with was care of their rather excellent 2017 EP ‘Chassit’ (see Ave Noctum passim). Since that time there has not been much in the way of recorded output, and quite a lot of change in terms of personnel, with only vocalist, bassist, and owner of one of the most magnificent stage names in rock, High Priestess Nighthawk, remaining. Whatever may have led to those upheavals, I cannot say, but I can truly say it has led to an album that has all the ingredients to bring them to the attention of a wider audience, and once tours, damn but I miss them, start again, is loaded with tracks screaming to be played live.
A fuzzy desert rock bass line opens the appropriately entitled ‘A Desert Through The Trees’ before the pace raises with the introduction of guitar and drum, bringing to mind the throb of a racing motorcycle. This doesn’t last, and when the vocals roll forth the song metamorphoses into a far more laid-back stoner centric affair, albeit there remains an underlying energy that allows the pace to pick up as it progresses and a suitably epic and distorted guitar solo takes centre stage.
‘The Wolf’ follows in a far more psychedelic fashion, continuing the album’s Red Riding Hood story, or more appropriately and mystically the modern take on the old fable ‘A Company of Wolves’, with Lord Paisley’s guitar work (damn but this band boasts some cracking stage monikers) trippily filling nearly the whole first half of the track before the sound builds up into a thudding, head banging, neck wrenching beat. Without a break this merges into ‘The Maiden’, an instrumental number that allows each member of the band to rock out and explore the chosen tools of their trade.
Next up is ‘Isabella (with Unrelenting Fangs)’, and frankly the improvised sounding opening of this long and meandering track wanders briefly into the realms of jazz before the drums lay down a commanding beat and the Doom takes command, and for a near ten minutes the listener is carried away in a thick and smoky haze of hypnotic riffs, thundering rhythms and sustained vocals, interspersed with dragging slabs of full on resinous Sabbath worship and lighter acid drenched explorations. The whole album is rounded off by ‘Howling of a Prothalamion’, and if you’re wondering, that would be the term for a song to celebrate a forthcoming wedding, where synths replace a church organ for the first few bars before drummer Baron Lycan (did I mention the cool stage names?) channels his inner Roger Taylor with lines that could have come from the Flash Gordon sound track. Indeed, with the far heavier and down-tuned guitar riffs and sinister edge, this could have been the wedding theme for Ming, if that famously campy and over the top movie had given into darkness and fallen into the hands of John Carpenter to direct.
Whilst doubtless rehearsed and meticulously written, the whole of ‘Lupi Amoris’ has an organic sound, as if the band had just entered a jam session from which the album emerged, meaning that the twists and turns in the tempo of each track keeps it fresh for repeated revisiting, never falling into the too familiar and formulaic. At barely over the half hour mark, it is over far too quickly, and as with their first LP, definitely has me wanting to hear what Heavy Temple will do next.
(8.5/10 Spenny)
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