It’s not often a Portuguese band gets much in the way of international coverage but if they’re all like Black Bombain it may be no wonder as the majority are probably glued to a bong in their dingy bedrooms. It’s easy to hear all the same why this trio is making waves though. Far Out, a two-track LP, is their fourth album and these lengthy jam specialists ain’t lying when they brand themselves as practitioners of “heavy-psyche”.
As if to order, the opening 40% (I did the maths) of the 17-minute “Africa II” are dangerously high on dirty, swaggering riffola. So much so as to invoke the ghost of Hendrix gettin’ a hardrock fix … and then it switches to what may as well be a new track. In blares a honk of tenor sax and so begins a wild improv psyche-rock instrumental not unlike one incarnation of the Gnod liveshow (but with way more wail). There are filthy fingers all over the fret and kraut-jazz flows freely. It’s a real overblown hoot, I tell you. It’s not very African truth be told, but then neither is its successor particularly Arabian.
Cue all 18 minutes of “Arabia”, ten of which are essentially a guitar solo set to chugging bass and propulsive drums. It’s straight-up gnarly. Instead of sax though you get modular synth swooshes and cosmic electronic chatter as the band get busy with plenty of whammy bar indulgence. The track’s midsection slows to a bong-chuffing dirge before all hell breaks loose for a guitar-on-guitar, balls-to-the-wall blowout. Suffice it to say that it and Far Out as a whole is a total boner jam for hard-rocking hippies.
~Far Out is out now on cherry red vinyl via the collaborative efforts of Cardinal Fuzz and Lovers and Lollipops.~