The strange, foggy prog of Mangoo’s second full-length album (and Small Stone debut), Neverland, is absorbingly complex, and a mere cursory listen would do it a great injustice. You need to remove your foil hat and step right into its tractor beam of ray gun fuzz and analog synth to experience what really lay beyond the flashing lights, and that’s some seriously heavy hooks and rowdy raunch n’ roll. Neverland is a blacktop spaceship running on intergalactic gasoline, driven by Finnish men in silver jumpsuits who know how to have a good time, even if it’s a totally weird one. Mangoo are the past and future all at once, neanderthals at a laser show, like Sasquatch playing 2112, but they make it sound so good, cohesive, and natural that you could put this one on at any point in space and time it would make total sense. While dominated by a cosmic-psych vibe introduced on the title track, Neverland does have some monumental brassy moments (“Deathmint”) and a quick hit of banjo (“Home”), but it’s the way songs like “Diamond in the Rough,” “You,” “Lose Yourself,” “You, Robot,” and “Moom” come together with the force of five meteors colliding that really defines this one. It mellows out near the end with wall melters “Painted Black” and “Hooks” before dropping one of the most epic closers I’ve heard in a long time, “Datzun”. It may take two or three listens to sort it all out, but Neverland eventually probes that sweet spot.
Members of Dozer, Demon Cleaner, Truckfighters, and Lowrider have all posed for Greenleaf’s promo shots at one point or another during the band’s spotty 12 year career, which makes ‘em a catch and release program for some of Sweden’s stoner elite, but you might just call this current incarnation Dozer 2.0 with Truckfighters’ Oskar Cedermalm on vocals instead of Fredrik Nordin (although he does make a guest appearance, as does Per Wiberg of ex-Opeth and Spiritual Beggars and Peder Bergstrand of ex-Lowrider and I are Droid). But hey, if Dozer ain’t in the bullying business anymore, I’ll gladly be pushed around by its bloozier brother, Greenleaf, and they certainly haven’t forgotten how to shove a roach-stained finger into your chest since not having released anything since 2007′s Agents of Ahriman. But that’s the great thing about Greenleaf; they can disappear for a spell — like they did between 2003′s Secret Alphabets and Agents of Ahriman — and come back sounding as tight as ever, and Nest of Vipers is packed just so, with all the movement and danger of its namesake. Greenleaf have always sounded like they’re plugged into mile-long coiled guitar cables in the only desert that exists in Scandinavia, kicking up smoky riffs and fuzzy groove, which they do here in bold fashion (“Jack Staff,” “Lilith,” “Dreamcatcher”), but the thing that has always set ‘em apart and given ‘em that royal, powerful edge is their ability to incorporate that other Swedish rock n’ roll force into their tunes: pure swank. It’s casually slight, but there’s enough garage rock vibe on songs like “Case of Fidelity” and “Sunken Ships” to shake things up just right, and when you add the cosmic prog of “Tree of Life” and the organ-fried “Nest of Vipers (A Multitude of Sins),” you’ve got one well-versed and exceptionally executed trove of heavy venom.
UK power trio Stubb step out of some foggy way-back machine, blown fuzzboxes and torn blotting paper spilling out about them, mere casualties of a road long traveled, and set their phasers to super-stun. Their mission, no doubt decreed by the God of untamed sideburns, paisley blouses, and flaming guitars, is to zap you with psych rays and fry your mind with electric blues, thereby enslaving you to the almighty groove. Resistance to this deliciously heavy tone is futile, so I’d surrender now if I were you, because Stubb’s self-titled debut album boasts enough in-your-face bass and righteous riffs to blast you to smithereens. Of course, that’s speaking only of the atomic shock of songs like “Road,” “Soul Mover,” and “Hard Hearted Woman,” and should your defenses allow you to absorb that 70s-bred hyper-blow, you’ll surely find yourself at the mercy of their alternate modes of attack, like the cosmic chorus melody of “Scale the Mountain,” the pagan folk of “Crosses You Bear,” and the acid rock of “Crying River”. Even though there’s plenty of opportunity for Stubb to let their wah-wah solos and freak jams run amok, they refuse to drag the album out and do a killer job of keeping their retro static short and sweet. Oh, and Stubb called on ally Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Stone Axe, HeavyPink) to mix and and master this one (and provide additional guitar on “Crying River”), so that ought to tell you that they’re taking this whole invasion thing pretty seriously. Yes, mission accomplished, I’d say.
Mangoo
Greenleaf
Stubb