Review: Moths & Locusts - Helios Rising

I'll admit to not knowing a great deal about Moths & Locusts, but reading their promo bio it seemed they were a band well worth investigating and getting to know that little bit better....and then I listened to 'Helios Rising'...wow! a huge album! Hailing from Canada (South Nanaimo, British Columbia to be exact), this is their second long player following 'Mission Collapse In The Twin Sun Megaverse'. They have twice acted as part of Can legend Damo Suzuki’s ‘Sound Carriers,’ and shared a stage with Acid Mothers Temple, Mudhoney, La Chinga, We Hunt Buffalo, the Pack A.D., Black Wizard and Operators, to name a few. 'Helios Rising' sees a release on 7th July via Sunmask Records

Album opener 'Our Dear Leader' immediately sets the tone with some driving space rock, propelled forward with some ace guitar courtesy of Angus Barter and Mike Breen, backed with some pulsating bass from Dave Read and thunderous drums from Dave Bean. There is more than a hint of Hawkwind, but that is always a good thing right? It is a gargantuan slab of space rock that merely whets the appetite for the joys in store. 'Beach Party Shakedown' is heralded by some glorious feedback before launching into a warped surf/drag-strip number, complete with snippets of spoken word. It is a marvellous melding of space rock and surfy garage punk (with the emphasis very much on the space rock)...it is a combo that doesn't particularly work on paper, but boy, these guys make it work! 'Troubled' is a slower tempo number, swirling psych guitars and haunted vocals that inhabit the background. It's the sort of track that lulls the listener into a reverie. The intensity picks up and the guitars become a dense wall of sound, with the umbrous vocals still haunting proceedings. It is elegant and beautiful, in direct contrast to the previous tracks, showing that these guys can do subtle and teasing as well as all-out balls to the wall. 'Invisible Light' takes another turn again...crashing drums set up a simple but heavy and slow rhythm over which the guitars border on melancholic, (Breen's father tragically passed away two days before the recording of the album but Breen decided to forge ahead, so little wonder there are some emotionally charged aspects to this album....much kudos to Breen for carrying on at a difficult time). The vocals, down in the mix, are lugubrious and mournful and the end product is an atmospheric slice of hazy psych. 'Capsule' opens with some spacey wah-wah that set the scene for some cosmic space rock of the highest order. 'Aftershave and Nicotine' is the shortest track, coming in at less than 2 minutes and acts as a groovy little interlude before the album's magnum opus that is 'Biblical Prophecy' - a sprawling track over 10 minutes in length. The guitars swirl and roam over a rock solid rhythm, supplemented with some spacey effects. It is a sedate track of infinite variety that keeps the listener hooked. It has a cosmic shoegaze vibe at times and straight up space rock at others...but it all amounts to an immersive ten minutes filled with fuzzy guitar....joy! The album is closed with the title track 'Helios Rising' - a lush, elegiac number that is just dripping in atmosphere. There are traces of the VU's 'Heroin' in the vaporous, hazy guitar and it all results in a truly beautiful track.

I can't think of any poetic way of saying this...but 'Helios Rising' is fantastic. It has pretty much everything one could want in a release, it steps up the tempo and density when it needs to but combines this with more introspective moments that verge on ethereal at times. On the back of this, I went back and gave the band's back catalogue a blast (via their Bandcamp page) and I urge you to do the same. 'Helios Rising' is out on July 7th via Sunmask - 300 copies on 180g clear/white vinyl, 50 copies on 180g black vinyl, 50 copies on 180g translucent blue vinyl (Moths & Locusts only) and 50 deluxe copies on 180g black vinyl with silkscreened poster (Sunmask only). For those of us here in the UK, Cardinal Fuzz will be getting a limited number I believe. There is a CD release also, via Noiseagonymayhem records.