King Buffalo
Repeater EP

THE REVIEW

I like these "mountain breaker" bands. I think of bands like Arbouretum (before the turn with their last album) or Pontiak: this acidic psychedelic music gives you a sort of visceral contact with the forces of nature, like you are one with it. A kind of eco-friendly heavy-psych. In both mentioned cases, the connection with nature is something strong: especially the Pontiak brothers. Besides now they have also dedicated themselves to beer production and have opened their own brewery in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, Jennings, Van, and Lain used to camp during their tours to highlight this connection with nature, which they consider central to their thinking.

King Buffalo, a heavy-psych band from Rochester, New York, somehow revive this same wild spirit and these acidic, psychedelic sounds derived from the genre's sound of the seventies, and which in recent years have brought success to Erik "Ripley" Johnson's Wooden Shjips. Formed in 2013, the trio (Sean McVay, Scott Donaldson, Dan Reynolds), after releasing a split with the Swedes Lé Betre and their first LP ("Orion"), made a name for themselves across the US by touring with Elder and All Them Witches. They now follow up with this EP called "Repeater," released on Stickman Records. The band's sound appears more "polished" compared to the past, and today it fundamentally relies on robust and long repetitive psychedelic compositions in the style of Black Mountain, characterized by a decidedly acid vein ("Repeater," "Centurion") and the drone that has now become a hallmark of the genre in recent years ("Too Little Too Late"). As this is an EP, the judgment is clearly partial, but the feelings are very positive, and at this point, we are waiting for the next LP to see if the definitive leap in quality has taken place.