Sunday, October 22, 2017

White Manna- Bleeding Eyes (Cardinal Fuzz)

White Manna are back with their 6th release since 2012 and their first studio album since 2015 (Pan). The title tracks starts things with an uptempo psych rocker. As with all the White Manna records, they have a special sound production. Drums are loud and dry, the guitars mixed to the back a bit, space sounds quite low most of the time but present, and a nice rolling bass line. Vocals on some tracks you can understand and others they are mixed quite low and it is very hard to understand what is sung. Then it is all about the psychedelic trip. Vimanas is a slower more stoney but grooving track with a piano keyboard. Trampoline is a space rocker with a great energy and some nice spacey synth sweeps. This is the best track on side A. Wow.. Invisible Kings finishes the side off and starts very abrupt and chaotic, twists your head around a bit, with a very psychedelic vocal, like a dark nightmare. Trippy stuff.  Flip the record over to kick things off with Speed Dagger, which you might expect to be a super fast track is actually pretty mid-paced and very 60s inspired but in a heavy way! English Breakfast keeps it psychedelic with a sort of repeated start type of groove. You are the Movie has a classic stoned White Manna sound like some of their earlier stuff.  Freak closes this latest psychedelic trip in a high energy fashion.

The first 100 pre-orders also came with a CD called Temporary Lines, which features tracks from various releases and some live stuff.  A few really cool tracks including a cover version of Master of the Universe by Hawkwind! IT was good to finally hear these tracks that the band released on a few split Lps that I had never heard (Die Roboter and Glory Stompers). 





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