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"It is scientifically proven that a woman's orgasm, in auditory terms, travels on a frequency that reaches the male ear regardless of the surrounding noise level."
These guys must have thought of something that crude when they decided to form this ultra-derivative band and even called it "Atomic Bitchwax". The cover of their first album is there and speaks for itself. A statement of intent composed of a few words: 'cool' and 'pure volume'. Essentially, the lesson of Monster Magnet is fully learned but at the same time rendered more dynamic, more imaginative, and pleasantly more casual. Blues, rock, boogie, psychedelia, stoner, and the sci-fi and 'robot' references that will set a trend later are perfectly outlined and then blended together; a bridge between '70s music and its reinterpretation in the '90s. Less hard than Fu Manchu and less obsessive than Kyuss, more creative than Monster Magnet, and more visionary than Nebula. This is the sum, nothing else.
Just the album you'd blast at full volume on your car stereo on a beautiful sunny day. So that the LT-licensed Panda Young stopped at the traffic light on Via Tuscolana corner Via Palmiro Togliatti looks a bit more like a canary yellow Dodge Plymouth Roadrunner speeding through the Mojave Desert. A few flashes as you shift gears and make the engine roar. "Stork Theme" seems to be born as a hypothetical tail thought amidst Bonzo's solo in Moby Dick: the drums go, the bassist and guitarist glance at each other, grab the beers on their respective amps, take a couple of sips then somebody goes "Oh, how do we start again when the drums end the solo?". Simple, synthesizing thirty years of chaotic rock in two minutes and twenty-eight seconds all instrumental: an opening with feedback fogs like the journeys of a Sabbathian astronaut, then a pounding riff, drum refrain - the inevitable cowbell beats appear but it lasts a moment - then a solo rather 'solos'... bass and guitar each on their own fuzzing and muddying the environment and the drums this time veering on the toms, like a helicopter diving to drop the napalm. "Ok, that's good! Cut up! Remove the drum solo and let's start the album directly with the second entry". The imprinting on Atomic Bitchwax is sealed. In "Birth To The Earth" only after a minute and a half of damn hard riffing does the singing start: do you know how it feels to run out of breath and dry your throat on high frequencies? A mix of honest incapacity combined with a healthy bad attitude; fabulous. "Crazed Fandango" has a Latin twist with the guitar while the bass - perpetually distorted in overdrive, fuzz, tube, phaser, and wah mixed alternatively! - acts as a baton in the middle of this epileptic dance. And what happens after the initial three minutes of "Gettin' Old"? How was this time change born? The chords are simply dumb, yet everything works perfectly. Oil, engine, gasoline, and propulsion. A heap of ideas, new old, original or copied, quoted, readapted, rearranged, well, you name it. Everything is played so well that the nuances become subtle and only the groove remains, powerful and exhilarating. At a certain point, you even hear them make a colossal timing mistake and an entire pattern goes to hell, so you imagine these four guys laughing heartily at some stupid nonsense spouted by the drummer while they were all in headphones recording. They leave the take as is: excellent and well-done everyone.
I like albums that make you feel a taste in your mouth, a flavor under your palate, and some vibration in your stomach. Or an image, a sound that can project figures and colors in your head while you listen. To travel on a frequency that penetrates the female ear, warming both.
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