Premiere: Review and Exclusive Track from The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol - Droneverdose

Come the final reckoning when the great music critic in the sky casts his eyes over the worthy, one name will be writ large in his tome of 'Psychedelic Legends' - The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol. "Surely you are over-egging the pudding Andy" I hear some dissenting voices cry...well, no. TBWNIAS are unique and pretty much peerless when it comes to improvised freak-outs and brain melting krautrock workouts. They are less a band and more of a collective; a shifting roll call of personnel based around a core of ever-presents. The music they produce is organic.... fluid improvisations ("unfettered by structure" if I may quote drummer John Westhaver) that reflect the personalities of the musicians and their intense love and deep knowledge of music, with an output as prodigious as it is exhilarating (their archive is full of hours and hours of sessions forever captured for posterity.) They are simply, without doubt, one of the most exciting bands plying their trade today but what sets them apart from other bands who play equally enthralling 'jam' based rock is the level or erudition...the intelligence and musical articulation is evident in each and every note they play. 'Droneverdose' is their 15th album release, if you include splits etc, and every man jack of 'em is smoking! The personnel on this particular album is Bill Guerrero, Nathaniel Hurlow, Dave Reford, Jason M. Vaughan, John Westhaver and Scott M. Thompson with some vocal samples from Hesham Attaya (pre-recorded back in 2016 - the addition of these vocals is the only overdub present on the album). You can't discuss TBWNIAS without mentioning Cardinal Fuzz, the label that has championed the band for years and bring us this album and also to whom I owe a personal debt of thanks for introducing me, and many others, to the phenomenon that is TBWNIAS. Below you have the chance to hear an exclusive cut from the album, the wonderful 'Gaussian Blur / Beach Debris'.

The album kicks off with 'Earworm', a short (by the band's standards) track but there is so much to love and admire that it belies the brevity....some sublime psychedelic guitar, a rock solid rhythm section and some lovely organ-like keyboards. It careers along at a fair spit dragging in influences from the sixties and seventies to create the nearest thing the band will come to a 'single'....'Earworm' by name, earworm by nature. 'Snoreland' opens with a guitar riff deeper than the Mariana Trench and reverberates through the skull until you think you are gonna start leaking brain matter. The song then grows into a track so fuzzy, so freaky and so goddamned good...the guitar positively screams, at times coming across like something of which the Buttholes could only dream but at other times like Kawabata Makoto on a very good day....it is the ultimate in freak-out. My only gripe that it is too short at shy of 3 mins....but what a hi-octane blast it is! 'Gaussian Blur / Beach Debris' comes next and sees us back in familiar TBWNIAS territory, namely a long (10 minutes plus) track that perfectly embodies what the band are about..... an organic, free flowing opus that shows the guys working together, wordlessly communicating and riffing off each other to produce a track that takes the structure of krautrock and melds it with some scorching psychedelia. It ebbs and flows like the great Ottawa River...always growing, always evolving and never anything less than immersive...brilliant stuff! '118' changes the mood, the Eastern vocalisations of Hesham Attaya immediately create an exotic vibe that is beautifully matched by the music...it's all very tranquil and blissful until a monster of a bassline is dropped and things change.....gone is the tranquillity to be replaced by some awesome fretwork and crashing drums. The eastern motif remains but is hidden beneath a maelstrom of psychedelic guitar for the most part, raising its head above the parapet occasionally via the vocals. The track is seen out with more vocals and handclaps that takes the track full circle. This is a rare track that is rehearsed before the band enters a studio but it still retains an immediacy and a freedom that comes across...a very clever and exceptionally well crafted song. 'Tsunami of Bullshit' is the last, and the longest, track on the album. It opens with some delicate, spacey guitar that sits above a repeating rhythm that is as steady as a metronome, the track as a whole shimmering like Floyd circa 'A Saucerful...'. It takes its time to grow, but grow it does...the guitars become more stridently psychedelic and the drums take on a hard motorik aspect. You can hear telltale traces of the stylings of both Can and Neu! in its krautrock base but the guitars are pure psych...meandering and blazing a cosmic trail across the track....this is pure class, this is pure TBWNIAS! Towards the end the track breaks down into something more dissonent; each instrument seems to go its own way for a spell but, as if telepathically linked, the band come back together to see the track out with some of the most enthralling psych...a fitting climax (and I use that word advisedly!) to a wonderful, wonderful album.

Once again The Band Whose Name Is a Symbol take freeform psych and raise it to something approaching perfection, and in my own opinion 'Droneverdose' is one of their best (I know that people 'who know' will have their own take on that). One of those albums that makes you glad to be alive and even gladder to be in on something special. The band have been collecting admirers on an almost daily basis in these last few years and so there is no danger of this record not selling - indeed, the band has been one of the most 'collectible' in recent times...but there is more to this music than collecting - it is about immersing yourself in a body of work that people have put their very soul into, it is about letting yourself float free in a psychedelic sea and being carried away by battering waves of krautrock and most importantly, it is about enjoying. 'Droneverdose' will be released by Cardinal Fuzz on February 9th but pre-orders will be up on the CF site very soon, so keep 'em peeled! So, as a taster, have a blast of 'Gaussian Blur / Beach Debris'......enjoy!