Spiral Bombs - "Felix Culpa" Review

Artist/ Band: Spiral Bombs
Title: Felix Culpa
Label: Pyramid Children Records
Year of Release: 2009
Offical Artist/ Band Link

The Review:

Meet a modern 3 piece San Francisco psychedelic band called Spiral Bombs. This CD starts with a slow motion fuzzy infused song with a partial 4AD-like sound, along with this 60's/70's goth LSD venture. With slightly down mixed vocals from the female singer, the lead guitar work has Robert Fripp influence, and often times seems to curl around the song from all four sides. Second song has a fairly horrible male vocal part, with some acoustic guitar, then more than half way through, comes out of it's shell and goes electric Crimson and becomes my favorite track. ( if the first half of the song had been sliced off, it would really have been nice ). Another thing that bugs me about this recording besides the bad male vocals, is the inconsistent mixing and production. Third song comes on with this same snail pace as first song, with an effect of the music speeding up and slowing down ( like a screwed up tape recorder with a weak motor). Same bad male vocals ( kinda like a very comatose David Byrne but no sense of tune or time ). Then the 3rd song proceeds to go into a 70's space jam that is not terrible, but just bland and not one bit interesting. I'll sum the rest of this up with an overview. Needless to say I am not impressed with this disc, but it has this 60's psychedelic attempt, which just falls flat on it's butt. By the time you get to song 5, you are pretty much either laying down in the floor, with lava lamp, under the influence of hallucinates, and sailing off into your own world, or you are ready to turn this music off.

I would love to say this CD will grow on you, but after 3 ( painful ) listens, I only find some interesting guitar work and occasional glimmers of a more Crimson jam sound.. That, however, is only just a small few minutes out of the entire 31 plus minutes this EP goes on for. Some might really like this, but just be sure you like trippy music that has a slurred feel to it most of the time. I do see potential in the band and await the next release to see what they evolve to, with a positive hope. In all fairness, they have a 7" single out called "A Guide's Oath/Eyes of Prey" that I liked far much better than this EP. Everything is clear, and the female vocals have that haunting Space Goddess of Gong sound. Production is far better too.

Reviewed by Lee Henderson on October 13th, 2010

Tracks:

01. Roosevelta

02. Sanguinary

03. Dimensional Scalping

04. Oblongata Perplexed

05. Rajeesh & the Oregon Sky