1000 tons of concrete landing on your head (Blues For The Red Sun - Kyuss)

Member Name: Mr Chubbers

Product:	Blues For The Red Sun - Kyuss
Date:	29/04/06 (73 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: a stoner rock classic

Disadvantages: many people will not like it

With this, their second album, the American band Kyuss pretty much set the standard for what was to be called "stoner rock", basically it's grunge taken even a step further, with the usual tuned down guitars and deep throated vocalists, mixed with a rythym section that destroy everything in its path. IT'S LOUD DAD!!!!!! Kyuss took the grunge sound even more down a heavy road when guitarist Josh Homme played his six string through a 400 watt bass amp, creating a deep dense guitar sound that characterises this lump of 1992 dense hard rock called "Blues For The Red Sun".

A lot of this album sounds very much like Metallica around the time of their "Black" album, with a fierce drum beat from Brant Bjork driving it along, John Garcia screams into the mike on pretty much the same tone as James Hetfield, and the 13 tracks on this collection are structured light / heavy in a similar kind of style to "Ride The Lightning" or "In God We Trust Inc". That's not to say it is just riffing and noise for the sake of it, listen carefully and you can hear delicate interplay in tracks like 50 Million Year Universe and the pummeling-yet-thoughtful Mondo Generator, with its vocoder singing over scat guitar..

A track by track analysis is pretty useless really, the songs are hard, heavy, brutal-but-intelligent guitar driven moshes with extremely powerful vocals. The bass and drums give me the feeling they can play for hours without stopping and this is the kind of music that you get the chaps together, light up a fat one and sit there nodding your head to. Well they don't call it stoner rock for nothing.

Homme and Oliveri did of course go on to play with Queens Of The Stone Age and helped batter down the door for a generation of very loud US rock bands to take centre stage in the mid 90's.

Though it's not really my preferred kind of music (I like rock a little more melodic and trebly) this is still pretty impressive to listen to now and again, when the missus is out of course. This should be compulsory listening for any stroppy 15 year old rock fan, as they can gain revenge on their parents by locking themselves in the bedroom and pumping it up.

Summary: Loud but very good