Blown Out - New Cruiser

Not content with having Dodge Meteor as one of his bands, Mike Vest – quite possibly the UK’s equivalent to Ty Segall hits us up with an album by one of his other outfits, Blown Out.

Vest likes to invest in all things noise infected.  This album ‘ New Cruiser’ consists of just two tracks and is more akin to vinyl as you can simply flip from one side to the other making it much more suitable to a black skatey or in fact a coloured record release.

Track 1 is the album’s title as well. It has a theme to it through its 15 odd minutes: driving guitars, impenetrable drums and a criminally good love of psych and post rock.  It never deviates from that course and whilst you might be quick to add that it lacks conviction due to its constant use of repetition, you would be very wrong indeed because the syrupy licks and rumbustious power chords soar at a level that only the clouds can reach. At around 10 minutes in the guitar takes a turn to the darker side, they brood and stand over you like a pending apocalypse might do, drenched in reverb and when the drums step up their game it becomes a battle of wits that neither side really wants to win but instead merely succeeding in upping the anti.

So what about the flip side ‘Phase II’, well it continues the dark theme that haplessly runs through its predecessor and is just one elongated jam of maelstrom proportions with its firecracker like delivery.  But with just over five minutes left of the ‘Phase II’ the band take their foot off the pedals and let a drone of squall and fried synth become the central focus before a Cosy Powell like drum solo rises like the bastard son of drum extravagance before packing a punch that even the late great Joe Lewis would be afraid to match up against.

Ripped to the hilt with cathartic lines of blackness, Blown Out have effectively created a game of two halves.  Two halves that smash your ears to within an inch of needing to acquire a hearing aid.