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Spain’s
Fungus seem to have studied Man’s Ruin’s aesthetics for
the design of their first full-length recording.
Psychonaut comes in a two-panel insert and features
the same exact font featured in most of Man’s Ruin
records. The artwork itself could have fit in that
label’s rosters too. Makes sense, Fungus is a four-piece
(now three) that plays stoner rock with the occasional
psychedelic flourishes. The requisite Black Sabbath
cover (“Into the Void”) tails the album, so basically
these dudes are doing nothing to set themselves apart.
Psychonaut is an OK record. It pains me to beat it down, but
there are some choppy factors floating around that hurt it. The
playing is loose and that’s OK because of the style, but it’s
also super basic with the band at times struggling to sound
coherent and even to keep together a mid tempo pace. Fuck ups are good in
my book, but in the case of Fungus they evidence themselves via
mistakes that could have and should have been corrected.
Perhaps more
troublesome than all are the vocals of Fernan. Either he is a
robot or his vocals have been filtered to give them a more
spacey aural appearance. That’s OK too, but he sounds disengaged
from the band and the effect doesn’t cover his shortcomings as a
vocalist. Some people favor the accents, as an English as a
Second Language speaker I rarely notice these but there is
something about Spanish bands singing in English that reveals
them right away. Of the eight songs included in Psychonaut,
two are instrumental, five are in English and only one is in
Spanish. Vocally, the one in Spanish is by far the superior one.
Psychonaut is by no means a terrible album. It’s just an
album by a band that is still green. Their original songs show
talent, especially guitar-wise which in this genre is about 75%
of the music. The solos are neat, but behind them, there is a
drummer lacking the chops and timing. More time in the garage
and on stage would do this band good.
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