Pink Mountaintops
Axis of Evol

THE REVIEW

A pile of bones are flying in the air, along with soft and fragrant roses.
Never have life and death danced so well together, eager to exchange their impressions.

The author of this splendid album is named Stephen McBean, already the voice and mind of the Canadian bands Black Mountain and Jerk With a Bomb. But while with the two groups the energy was focused on a decidedly classic sound (still psychedelic, but with references to vintage hard rock), in this solo project (the second, precisely) McBean lets his mind gallop into distant territories, where doors open to delicate and painful acoustic songs (the opening “Comas” and the closing “How We can get free”) and plunge into the guts of the most drugged-out rock'n'roll (“New Drug Queens”), which is nothing but stoner mixed with new-wave; and then even further down, into a fascinating luciferian folk (“Plastic Man, You’re the devil”) until a nearly 9-minute-long tribal sabbath (“Slaves”) that soaks in the acid past of Primal Scream and sees a slight light of hope in the suffering singing, accompanied by a guitar that twists itself as well.

An album only 34 minutes long, but capable of making us imagine a path of redemption.
Between paradise, purgatory, and plenty of hell.