Smattered with lo-fi crunch and grimy feedback, this Acid Mother’s Temple release may be their all-around darkest, bleakest, most brutal witch's brew to date. Guitarist Makoto Kawabata only half-jokingly says this album is a nod to Sunn O)))’s nihilistic black abyss. Upon first listen, I was a bit disappointed, even bored, by this release, hoping for compositions, psychedelic normality, and mind-expanding clarity -- perhaps something more eclectic and composed, like 2001’s New Geocentric World. Then, I remembered I am Mangoon. I live for pain and darkness and swirling clouds of negativity. And I am not above reproach when I say that, although it is certainly not their most thought-out effort, this disc will fit in snugly with their 500,000 other releases teeming with images of Russ Myers-inspired soft porn, modern minimalism, and good, old-fashioned American psych couture.
"Eternal Incantation or Perpetual Nightmare" starts off with 35 uncomfortable seconds of silence before a piercing guitar comes in, something like the sound Greg Ginn got from turning on his modified Dan Armstrong at the beginning of every single Black Flag song. Before long, a Sunn O)))-like stew of black sewage gurgles out with celestial flute à la Bardo Pond taking us through a reworking of Aqualung. Piercing sine waves upset the inner equilibrium, as howling winds accompany. Kawabata Makoto comes in with some dirty-ass riffage, truly some of the most fucking gnarled-out playing I’ve ever heard from him. Blasts of thunder emanate from the synth, a cry to heaven, a mangled mess of guitars and hair and fuzz and motorcycles crashing, spilling their victims onto the highway.
At 7:25, the track breaks off into a quasi-heavy metal riff, with sweeping synths and riffage that would not be out of place on Flower Travellin’ Band’s Satori. Bassist Tsuyama Atsushi breaks off into his masterful Tibetan throat singing and lays out a ritualistic, native mating call, reminiscent of the early Cromagnon stuff. The indigenous throat singing somehow morphs into a jazzy scat, as Kawaboto pulls another mantra-riff from the cosmos and really digs in, playing repetitively and hypnotically before the universe starts to unravel again and the listener is taken on another journey across hyperspace. Eventually, the heaviness subsides momentarily, as a ripping-fat synth comes in alone and builds into another flute-based ritual sacrifice. The whole thing comes out of the muck and transmutes into a jaunty, blazin’, wind-in-your-hair, buoyant psychedelia; the whole Easy Rider speeding-into-the-sunset thing is really in effect here. Seems at the end of this track there is redemption -- that eternal incantation chosen over the perpetual nightmare. (The second track, "Recurring Dream and Apocalypse of Darkness," is even more morose, revolving around a funeral dirge riff-om for about 25 minutes before culminating in a chorus of e-bowed guitars and cascades of polytonal feedback.)
Although not essential for your average psych collector, those of you into heavier or noisier psych, like Birds of Maya or doomier Japanese psych like Up-Tight or Kousokuya, might want to consider adding this to your collection. The vinyl apparently has nearly twice as much material on it, so you may want to find a comfortable place to sit while you’re taken on a trip through heaven, hell, parallel universes, and the ultimate astral planes of consciousness. Got to give a nod to the artwork, too, which is nearly as dense as the music.
1. Eternal Incantation Or Perpetual Nightmare
2. Recurring Dream And Apocalypse Of Darkness
More about: Acid Mother's Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.
