Acid King
Zoroaster

THE REVIEW

I like  Lori S. to imagine her like this, slouched on the couch with her legs spread, beer belly wrapped in a greasy t-shirt, a bottle of Bud ready in one hand and a cigarette burned down to the filter in the other. Then, still in the delirium of my imagination, I see a little man X enter the room, his identity irrelevant, her current partner (Lori is the ex-wife of Dale Crover, from the Melvins). The little man timidly suggests: "There's nothing in the house, dear, just beer, perhaps we should do some shopping..." Then I see the aforementioned bottle of beer dart through the air, shattering against the wall into a thousand pieces after narrowly missing the little man's head. The foamy liquid trickles down the wall, coagulating into a puddle like blonde blood. And Lori S. seals it all with a nice "Don't piss me off, you!" before going back to slaughtering her guitar a bit more.

This portrayal of the frontwoman of the Acid King isn't very original, I admit. But fundamentally it's the image anyone would form by lending an ear to any work by Lori's band. If there's something that can be understood from that granitic Stoner/Doom is that this woman has guts, and so does the whole group. A multifaceted scrotum is indeed needed to tame this monstrous creature, a hybrid of two fearsome genres that draws the worst side from both... just like it takes guts to be one of the few (the only?) Stoner-Women in the world. Certainly, the Electric Wizard have their Liz, strong with the sex appeal factor. But Lori is of a completely different breed, I assure you.

Distorted and horrifically obsessive riffs, bass and guitar in unison immersed in fuzz and reverb, that touch of rancid psychedelia, that voice so hypnotic and venomous it's hard to believe it's coming from a woman's throat: too different in temperament from Kyuss or Sleep, more concrete but less mephitic than the aforementioned Electric Wizard, the Kings of Acid have managed to coin a truly unique and unmistakable sound, which is not easy in the crowded arena of alternative and psychedelic metal.

This "Zoroaster" is their first LP, a raw and primitive rock, nonetheless difficult to attack. One cannot help but be fascinated by the lysergic outputs of "Evil Satan", get overwhelmed by the bone-crushing stride of "Tank", or be captivated by the dragging riff of "One-ninety six" and "Reload". A good album I strongly recommend, just like the following "Busse Woods" and "III".

Listen, and you'll see that even in your mind, the image of a beer puddle will emerge, with pieces of glass still swimming in it like placid swimmers...