Fu Manchu
Eatin' Dust

THE REVIEW

You won't find anything incorporeal, reflective, or contemplative here.

Fu Manchu is the most earthy and horizontal band on the planet: the hyperamplification of a sound as explosive and sunny as it is cavernous and barbaric. "Eatin' Dust” further consolidates the granite style of the Los Angeles band after the commendable "No One Rides,” "Daredevil,” "In Search Of,” and especially the monumental "The Action Is Go,” which (simultaneously with the introduction of Brant Bjork into the lineup) highlights them as the most powerful and dazed interpreters of the stoner genre.
Therefore, in the form of an EP and initially conceived as a follow-up to the new single cover "Godzilla,” eight intensely compelling tracks for an album that seems opposite to its predecessor: as exhausting, monolithic, and technically monothematic as "The Action Is Go” was, this one is equally essential, fluid and dissimilar. But the most intriguing thing about "Eatin' Dust" is that it takes a while to take off, like a blazing diesel pickup that needs to warm up a bit before taking you full speed. The first three pieces are built on simple mid-tempo and slurred with a heaviness that is the bastard and dumb offspring of the best seventies: the slow pace of "Godzilla,” the rhymed voice on the four-four that further charges the sense of a devastating motion, as if the Blue Oyster Cult – original composers of the track - decided to end it all and raze the entire world while parading through the great metropolises on the monster's back. "Module Overload” sounds like an ZZ Top track pumped with speedball <...ok, what now? do we hit hard with coke or slow down with heroin?> then "Living Legend,” which calls on the Black Sabbath stoned on marijuana to hit a backbeat. Suddenly, the bpm doubles with "Eatin' Dust,” "Shift Kicker,” and "Orbiter” which explode in the stereo speakers with unprecedented power; Led Zeppelin and Thin Lizzy fiercely distorted and accelerated. The point is that these damn bastards are magnificently evocative in the extent to which they carry forward a ruthless extremization of a performance technique (from Jimi Hendrix downward, who the hell do you think is the greatest ever? Not that Fu Manchu's guitar work is directly linked to old Jimi, mind you: I mean in terms of sound amplification, pure wattage) and they do it by distorting the same chords of thirty years ago in an animalistic way: harder, heavier, and more grinding than anything that has come before. The Blue Cheer of the twenty-first century. Once this is metabolized, even the atonal voice of Scott Hill, which drags more than sings vocal chants without any melodic sense, becomes exciting.
So, the final bang is approached at full speed. Where the concluding "Mongoose” and "Pigeon Toe” stand out, two pure adrenaline torpedoes where the interplay between the musicians becomes astonishing, and the guys strike with crude and ecstatic power perfectly choosing the timing, the pauses, and the explosions in a coordination of sounds that are trails of alchemical fire.

Indestructible and blissful.
How can you miss them when for you too the word is only one?
Sucking the 70s!