Lodestone 2015
Searching for a trip, East Midlands stoner rockers go on a global rampage.
From Nottingham to Derby, there’s not much desert land but if Blighty grounds need scorching, this local force is up to the task. The quartet’s reach couldn’t be less parochial, though, “Tokyo Haze” and “Virginia Lake” – the bookends of their debut EP – revealing the group’s plot to hook the whole wide world on a hefty riff, yet there’s a twist to it.
Simon Prince’s guitars and Josh Morgan’s bass unfold their assault with one eye on the heaviness and the other on traditional patterns, Oriental and beyond that. Going to “a place we never knew” and slowing down for a better view, the foursome boil the tension to march fiercely to the beat of “threeonenine” where Mark Butler’s vocals get away in the middle of the track to make room for chthonic-deep drama. So while “Nullifidian” may run on empty just as its atheistic subject suggests, but there’s a lot of momentum in these tracks, and if the band maintain it they will roll far.
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