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“I am alone on the edge of the world. No one reaches out to me. Sitting alone, bathed in rays. Some things are just like this and my mind can breathe. The wait is hard, I surrender to the sun, hands in the sand. The sour earth purifies me, but the world never arrives.” Space Cadet.
Reviewing this album is like trying to give an opinion on an emotion. For some, music is just music, but there are some compositions that cannot be reduced to entertainment, and Welcome to Sky Valley is the synthesis of dreamlike emotions, tinged with the blues, the kind of blues born from men who had demons inside them, who struggle with their own hearts, to express what we feel, to express what we experience on this planet called Earth, among desert valleys and skies, natural contrasts that we also live as metaphors in our cities, in our homes and lives. Kyuss, with their valve distortions, musically well-influenced by the 70s, with a gaze towards the future, have immortalized a journey sometimes hallucinatory, sometimes fast and unhinged, sometimes romantic and suggestive, a journey that each of us lives sooner or later.
We don’t need the history and hearsay that surround Kyuss and the new survivors, what remains is the music, the intention, and in Welcome to Sky Valley there is plenty of it. The beauty of this album also lies in the fact that it traverses various moments, from the suffocating and sound-filled opening of Gardenia, to the acoustic Space Cadet, up to the gripping riff of Whitewater. You just need to listen to the album and let yourself go…
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
06 Demon Cleaner (05:19)
I've got the demons in me
I've got to brush them all way
I feel the demons rage
I must clean them all away
Yeah
It's sad to see more rage
Cobwebs in the way
That magic cleaner will shine his smile on my face
Yeah
I am the demon cleaner who saves the day
I got the back wall
Important they'll always stay
Yeah
If only one thing that you know
Imposters from the show
They'll try to trick you into
Normal treatment
Oh, don't you listen to them say
Shush them all away
I am the demon cleaner
Madman of encino
I am the freedom bleeding
Standing naked here to say
I'm the only way
07 Odyssey (04:20)
Take one to the mountain
Take one to the sea
Take one to the belly of the beast
And then you'll take one with me
Shut it (2x)
Freezing in the fires
Well I oughta howl your name
Once you return from the belly of the beast
You're never quite the same
Shut it, shut it on (2x)
Fire on the mountain
And it rages out of control
The fire inside the belly of the beast
Well it burns, then wraps your soul
Shut it, shut it on (2x)
08 Conan Troutman (02:12)
Feed my lung, flower seed
You are gone and now I'm free (I'm free - yeah)
Strip me down to nothing
Thought we would free the vulture (make it fly)
Burning my brain and burning my teeth (in the sun)
A hundred degrees and burning my need (make it fly)
Live the love that I have for you
Taking your life from off you (free)
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By il trucido
Welcome To Sky Valley hypnotizes you, 'mescalinizes' you, pervades you, it 'gets inside you', truly.
If someone says that this album is bad, that person is automatically an idiot, even if it’s Riccardo Muti.
By rdegioann452
I simply invite anyone who hasn’t done so yet to listen to this album and do the same with the rest of their discography.
'Sky Valley' is the best among their albums, including 'Blues for the Red Sun', simply because you won’t find songs like 'Gardenia', 'Asteroid' and 'Odyssey' in the latter.
