Nearly two years following the release of their critically acclaimed second album Moons of Uranus, Norwegian psych/stoner rockers Dune Sea now return with their third effort titled Orbital Distortion. Out now via All Good Clean Records, Orbital Distortion sees the Norwegian trio delving further into space rock, taking off for a grand musical journey into outer space.
Dune Sea started out as a 2012 solo project for Ole Nogva, a Trondheim-based guitarist/keys player, vocalist and all-round sonic warrior, described then on Facebook as “a true Norwegian post-ironic space stoner”. Later in 2017, they released their first recording, the All Quiet Under The Suns EP. Following local critical success across Norway, their debut album Dune Sea was released in 2019. Since then, Dune Sea have established themselves as a solid part of the Norwegian psych-scene and released the second album Moons Of Uranus. Soaked in psych-space rock, their universe has expanded for every release (huh!) and on this effort it seems like they might have left the Earth for good to cruise throughout the cosmos!
The essential make-up of this band is still definitely garage-style, psychedelic stoner rock, soaked in big, big 70’s influences such as Hawkwind, with maybe a touch of Gong….There’s not a huge amount of musical development from Moons of Uranus, still lots of trippy, swirling synth sounds, lots of low-end riffing, lots of lo-fi vocal effects albeit always low down in the mix. Fans of their previous work will undoubtedly enjoy this just as much, the main issue for newcomers being the relative degree of similarity in the song structures – they are all clearly from the same stable and can easily merge with each other. But it is (mostly) still All Good Stuff, like the record label says (I fondly remember a wonderfully wacky and equally psychedelic sampler album from United Artists called All Good Clean Fun….Happy Daze!
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Astro Chimp opens the set with the time-honoured gong (small ‘g’) so beloved of pyschedelia. Nice riffs ensue, confirming the band’s comfort with effortlessly melding space rock and stoner Rock/Metal with relevant ease, the signature mix of fuzzed riffs and fuzzed vocals sets the tone for the rest of the album. They do like a deliberately dirty mix, but it doesn’t make for a huge amount of clarity in the lyrics. Tuneful stuff though.
Hubro is next, using the same style: Quirky intro, the ‘meat in the sandwich’ being pacey riffs and percussion with echoey, fuzzed communal vocals, then an end section featuring a variation on the earlier riffs. Euphorialis, Draugen and Gargantua all follow in a fairly similar vein, same chords, same hazy, blurred vocals…its getting a bit formulaic by now.
Trinity is different! Slower, an eastern vibe, a sort of stoner-blues, and its refreshing simply because it veers away from what is largely a well-worn if not worn-out pattern? I’m impressed with this one, not least because for once the vocals aren’t drowned in a tsunami of fuzz guitar!
Anesthesia dives headlong back into the sludgy pool known as Hawkwind territory, accentuated by the closer Hevn, at seven minutes the longest track on the album. It’s redeemed around the three-minute-mark by an extended bridge that loses the riffs and swirls around a nicely melodic sequence of notes, synths also adding that big, sense-surround cinematic feel of genuine space rock…sadly we’re then back into stoner-thrash territory.
These guys can play a bit, and individual tracks aren’t bad, but there’s simply not enough light and shade across the album. Cosmic it might aim to be, but the cosmos has lots of bright stars scooting through the darkness of eternity….
The power of the playing is clearly meant to be relentless, and anyone who loves / loved the heavyweight end of the 70’s in terms of Hawkwind and Iron Butterfly will be very interested in this, as will fans of Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats; and the wider Stoner Rock genre – but I don’t think they’ll win any new hearts without that injection of variety? And again there’s nothing recent out on Youtube etc, so here’s a re-run of Pentobarbitol and Ethanol from two albums ago – it does capture the essence of the band pretty well.
