Electric Hydra – Electric Hydra
Release Date: 27th November 2020
Label: Majestic Mountain Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Stoner Punk
FFO: Fu Manchu, Black Sabbath, We Hunt Buffalo, Kyuss.
Review By: Paul Franklin
Småland on the southwest cost of Sweden, hometown not only to this band, but a certain well-known blue and yellow furniture giant. And there can surely be no better test of your flat pack assembly skills, than plugging in some big ass speakers, cranking the volume and seeing what remains standing after subjecting it to the relentless, monolithic barrage that is Electric Hydra’s debut.
Probably best described as punk infused stoner rock, they don’t allow themselves to linger in any self-indulgences, hitting you hard and fast with the thrashy It Comes Alive, the intensity barely drops as they sear through ten tracks in just 34 minutes.
Formed through an affinity with the likes of Fu Manchu, Black Sabbath, Entombed and Kyuss, Electric Hydra combine heaviness with a sense of groove. The bass sounds like it should have its own gravitational pull and the guitars alternate between dirty chugging rhythms and face melting riffs. The drums are both enormous and wildly frenetic, anchoring the tracks down and then darting in and filling gaps all over the place. Swarming all over and through this glorious soundscape, the vocals have a genuine symbiosis with the music, evolving from punky attitude to stoner doom as the songs demand.
The Stomping Won’t Go To War (With Myself), is an anthem of defiance wrapped around a circling beat. The filthy riff that writhes at the heart of Blackened Eyes has an kinship with Motörhead, whilst the dreamy Kyuss-like intro to Iron Lung is soon annihilated by a riff so dirty it sounds like a length of rusty razor wire being pulled out of Satan’s rectum.
Grab What’s Yours shares its doomy atmosphere with the aforementioned Iron Lung, but again, at just over the three-minute mark, it doesn’t lose its way and get stuck in the sludge. 1000 Lies, referencing a ‘..stranger, who walks the earth’, is the fast cut, edited highlights of the prolonged trek undertaken by Sabbath’s The Wizard.
Breaking with tradition, Electric Hydra does not end with the usual six minute plus final epic track. Instead, Rise From Below, although starting quiet and building as expected (with calls to ‘take me away’), swells to a place where you think it’s going to soar off, but, rather brilliantly just ends. After four and half minutes!
Love it!
(4.5 / 5)
