Acid Mothers & The Cosmic Inferno - Journey Into The Cosmic Inferno [Very Friendly - 2008]After the recent heavy and often crushing jam based sound of Recurring Dream And Apocalypse Of Darkness, Journey into the Cosmic Inferno sees AMT returning with a more varied, trip-out and for the most part focused album- that’s a really joy to listening to and stands as one of my favourites in AMT's vast discography. Opening up the album we have Cosmic Inferno’s Gate which enters with shadowy 70’s church/ Hammond organ like repetition which builds into a jam with acoustic guitar and sitar elements that are joined by eastern percussion tone and rain stick sounds. But instead of staying too long in one groove(as they can sometimes do) they drop down spacey discordant eastern dirge, before shifting into a strummed acoustic guitars meets droning synth meets sawing avant violin like textures – really a great start to the album. Next up is Master of Cosmic Inferno which crashers in with a great atmospheric eastern tinged rock riff and spacey synth curls before opening up into chanted/ layered male and female vocals- once more the track is kept nicely active and shifting/building- like shifting into churning blues/rock groove or swan driving into spacey/ sensual Japanese female vocal drift. Cosmic Blood feast is next & it's a real quite manic mix of discordant weird plucking tone, vibes, spacey synth and weird carzoo type sound – it feels like early Resident's blasting into space. Next is ecstasy into the cosmic inferno which returns with the riff from Master of Cosmic Inferno but in a more fuzz-wah peddle heavy and atmospheric mood, giving the feeling of the soundtrack to a gone a stray spy film based in space. Then we’re into the track Usisi which is great strum along and playful acoustic guitar tune with male and female hippy sing along over the top, with later on spacey snyth emerging along with recorder tone. And lastly we have Shalom Cosmic Inferno which mixers together the doomy 70’s organ tone from the first track, passionate gitar soloing and female ah’s to great dramatic and epic effect. A really great end to a near faultless disk. Simply put a truly great AMT album with loads of variation, atmosphere, quirkiness’ and focus- it's an really pleasure from beginning to end. oh and there’s some great artwork too the cover is the band floating in space in meditation pose and on the back cover there all dressed in Hawaiian shirts and shorts- great stuff! Roger Batty
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