Karma To Burn
Wild Wonderful Purgatory

Let's start with a bit of history: after a long apprenticeship and wandering, Karma to Burn found a label willing to sign them, which is Roadrunner. It's 1997. But there is one condition, which is that they find a singer. Yes, because these guys are an instrumental band.

Stoner, avalanches of riffs, valve amplifiers (mesa-boogie), hatred and sarcasm towards their homeland (West Virginia), drugs (many believe they broke up precisely because of problems with it), alcohol.

This is the (musical and otherwise) humus where they grew. William Mecum (guitars), Rich Mullins (bass), Nathan Limbaugh (drums) enlisted their friend Jason Jarosz on vocals and retreated to the Appalachian Mountains to record their self-titled debut album. The result was a versatile work with Janosz's shamanic voice counterpointing a sick, dark, and decadent stoner. An album that brought the Virginians to prominence (relatively speaking!). Of note in this beauty is a simply marvelous version of "Twenty four hours" by Joy Division. At the time (and still today to be honest), the album literally blew me away. I listened to it over and over, it became almost an obsession. I only looked into the band some time later. They had kicked out Jarosz (not in a very polite way...) while the drummer left of his own accord, replaced by a certain Rob Oswald. But the news that made me jump out of my chair was that John Garcia (yes, the one from Kyuss) had been trying with them for about a year. Then unfortunately due to contractual issues and other reasons, it didn't happen. The same singer from the disbanded Californians said in an interview that he wouldn't join Karma to Burn but was planning to form a new band (which would be named Slo Burn...). In the same interview, Garcia highlighted that the physiological nature of Karma to Burn was still instrumental. In short, the band by its nature played better and with more impact in classic triangular formation (bass, drums, guitar), without vocals.

When in '99 this "Wild Wonderful Purgatory" came out, I fully understood and agreed with Garcia's words. In fact, in my humble opinion, this album owes its overwhelming power and at the same time its visionary "density" to the lack of vocals. And it is (taste is subjective, of course) superior in every aspect (admittedly maybe not in experimentation) to their self-titled debut album. "Wild Wonderful Purgatory" (a sarcastic mockery to West Virginia, nicknamed almost heaven) consists of 12 tracks with numerical titles in no particular order. Choose the order because the result doesn't change: sheets of flaming riffs that pour over you in a completely visceral and creative way. An album to listen to in one breath (and this time it's not the usual rhetorical phrase!). This would make even an opium addict nod...

Karma to Burn here take all the paradigmatic stoner and hard-rock stuff they spewed into the ether over the previous ten years and blend it into a vintage, valve-driven, super-distorted sonic vortex. Thus, the squaring of the circle is perfect. The resulting material is pure thundering and spasmodic stoner that delights in painting frescoes of an astonishing sensory dizziness mostly due to an obsessive circularity of riffs.

Out come true anthems with irresistible appeal and groove like "Thirty", "One" or "Seven" but at the same time darker and more jagged tracks like "ThirtyTwo", "Three", or the final very acidic "Eight". In any case, in all the pieces the foot is flat on the accelerator. Without compromises or artifices.
The sound is violent, heavy, fat, acidic, flaming I dare say.

Let yourself be carried away by this succession of monolithic riffs. You will be captivated, you will move with them...