Bongzilla
Gateway

In this world ravaged by senseless discursive metrics of an iPhone/visual matrix, where Milanese rappers, having escaped the workforce, deconstruct their existence upon the now worn-out female sexual organ, vainly hiding their inhuman impotence from the Italian populace, something, from deep within, shakes the viscera and returns prophetically to the tormented yet stoning memory.

Of this sweet abortion, I perceive the greenish hue... and the aroma, which, pulsing, makes the air dense like bricks of space Ganja, deleterious.

Corrosive.

Ten years ago, Gateway (2002, Relapse) was released, a composition culturally esoteric and doped, whose entity would initiate a cycle that for at least another eight years, led to the worthy rediscovery and celebration of a genre like stoner-metal, currently so, so much, yet so very much mistreated by pseudo-pretentious bands, certainly not equally deserving.

I often wonder what Wendy Schneider, producer of this succulent green-tinted abomination, thought once she listened to, monolith after monolith, the sublime 8 tracks that this record struggles to contain within its physicality... as if it were Syrian radioactive material. Well, I believe that certainly, as a certain Bill Hicks said, one potential reflection might be: "Case, fuckin', close!"

Yes, because there's not much to do here. We're talking about amorphous distortions, lush as titanic marijuana plantations, of mountains of valves, and valves, and more valves, on mountains of other valves... Bongzilla. A name, and a bicentennial guarantee. A name, thundering like the thrashing voice of Viracocha, raging like a demonic Fuzz incited to dreamy delinquency. And it’s a bitter pill, dear jersey-shore "strays" of four copecs... Not even the worst gangrenous tanning bed lamp could make you black, or rather, GREEN like "Greenthumb", a session before a seventies-laden yet dark litany. And what to say, dear "bling wannabes", about little things like "666lb. Bongsession"? Flow, various style displays from jokers, sexually ambiguous tattoos and the like would be literally torn from your flesh, if only you could direct the anarcho-Satanism reigning in atomic tracks like this towards your own autistic eardrums: 7 minutes and 55 seconds of unparalleled corporeal annihilation. Vibrations, vibrations, and more vibrations... would collapse ramparts, discos, and filthy private areas of any Milanese dive of decadent (though approaching east-inction) humankind. And once again: "Case, fuckin', close!". And onwards, with basaltic 'puffs' like "Trinity", the fifth track, whose acknowledgment could only simply evaporate any trivial drink from obligatory-consumption (?) post-consumerism, after having drained away 'only' all the oceans!

Ah, truly, I don’t think you’d find words to rhyme. No.

And finally "Gateway", the sixth track. The title dealer of this endless disc-shaped object. Overdose of torrential riffs, ungainly yet heavily composed, in a very pleasant auscultatory torment that one would not want to see, indeed, end. The last gate, towards the creeping chaos, imminent, in this world of poorly raised kids... redundant in acidity, but not akin to acid.

And so let it be then!

Bow down, unbelievers!

To the power of stoner-doom that once was, and will echo concentrically until the nth big bang.

Ph'nglui mgwl'nafh Bongzilla R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!!!!!!!

(which translated from an ancient Mesoamerican language, literally means: "Get these damn Bongzilla and pray that your ears don’t bleed to your ass!!!!!!!!")

Case, fuckin', close.