Blues for the Red Sun (Blues For The Red Sun - Kyuss)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Blues For The Red Sun - Kyuss
Date:	02/09/08 (17 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Perfects and popularises the stoner rock style.

Disadvantages: Interludes don't add much to the album.

It's with their third album that stoner rock pioneers Kyuss really hit their stride as well as the rock mainstream, letting forth a subtly powerful barrage of slow, warm and fuzzy instrumentation beneath John Garcia's irresistible melodic singing. These songs are still heavily based in the blues rock tradition, but move beyond traditional doom rock towards something more emotive, compelling and bizarrely reminiscent of a drive down a desert road in the Southern United States, picking up hookers and sleeping in seedy motels.

The band are masters of tempo, churning out predominantly slow riffs and rhythms that accelerate to great effect on occasion, particularly at the escalating finale of 'Thumb' and the shorter and faster 'Caterpillar March.' Some songs favour an entirely stoned aesthetic such as the slow and fuzzy 'Molten Universe' and the odd 'Thong Song,' while the band never forgets its blues origins with guitar licks in 'Apothecaries' Weight' and others. The tracklist is bulked out a little misleadingly by frequent short interludes ranging from several seconds to a couple of minutes, but even these serve to bridge the songs in a more coherent fashion.

1. Thumb
2. Green Machine
3. Molten Universe
4. 50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up)
5. Thong Song
6. Apothecaries' Weight
7. Caterpillar March
8. Freedom Run
9. 800
10. Writhe
11. Capsized
12. Allen's Wrench
13. Mondo Generator
14. Yeah

Summary: Kyuss' third album (1992).