Tarantula Hawk
Tarantula Hawk (2)

THE REVIEW

Imagine the early Pink Floyd, blend them with the more spacey Hawkwind and throw this sonic magma into doom/proto black metal scenarios. This is what most closely resembles an explanation of the music played by Tarantula Hawk.

Once again, Neurot releases a "sui generis" album of Martian and unclassifiable music. It's their second album and like the first, it has no title or song names. Not even a word, not a whisper, just a continuous and malevolent flow often atonal of claustrophobic drones, raw and changing guitars, spacey vintage keyboards, and super distorted bass. The drums seem to come from a more distant listening plane, almost awkward in their pace, which sometimes stops to make way for moments entirely supported by synthesizers that can't help but remind us of the best Tangerine Dream (those of Alpha Centauri and Zeit, to be clear).
Within all this, precious melodic weavings emerge like mushrooms that allow a breather, leaving the listener floating and incredulous for a few seconds before diving back into this true musical journey.

The effect they provoke is apocalyptic. Fear, anguish, anxiety, but also a sense of emptiness, alienation, auditory hallucinations. The music of the San Diego trio (with former members of Locust, perhaps the craziest grind project on the planet) follows ungraspable trajectories to then let itself be carried into almost post-rock "worlds" but also into environments that are nothing short of visionary black-metal.

What this record sounds like is all told by the cover: imagine a fixed gaze on the horizon moving in an accelerated way. Everything then seems to re-melt into their own music, creating strange and unnatural emotions. In short, it's an album that has multiple listening planes intertwined with each other, yet different and to be discovered bit by bit.
Five tracks inseparably fused together that seek (and in my opinion, succeed remarkably) to take the listener to sad and desolate territories while making their eardrums bleed. I can only recommend listening to it by saying that recently the band has made the entire album available for free download on their website!!
Innovative, visionary, unmissable...