I have to admit I approached this one with some trepidation based on the early word of mouth. I’m fairly new to their sound and was intrigued, as I am with most of the El Paraiso label, in how they can get me to listen to anything Jazz-influenced. It’s an approach that has really worked for me musically. So when I heard this release was going to be on Tee Pee Records and would feature a more hardnosed approach I was a bit skeptical.
Five tracks are kicked off with the frantic-paced “Maelstrom” which features some truly heavy guitar work and sax over its 10 minutes. Nobody is taking it easy on this one. “Olympia” follows and is a bit less frenetic with a lighter touch on the dueling guitars in what I often call a bit more earthy-crunchy feel, translation, a bit Dead influenced but heavier. “Landfall” and “Redwood Grove “flows with much of the same feel, much more rocked out than previous releases but not straying all that far. “Going Up” closes out the record with a heavy baseline and again fierce guitar work. I gotta admit I think some of the early reviews on this are way off. While it is certainly more spaced out and heavy than earlier works and less jazz-influenced I certainly am not picking up on all the out-of-hand Sax work I have heard mentioned. But this one certainly does rock.
