Short Reviews [Murky Red - 2015 - "No Pocus Without Hocus"]

I would personally like to think that the band named this 2015 album after the classic number by Focus, as opposed to the Disney movie, but one never knows these days! According to their site, “Murky Red is a Belgian based band founded in 2009, who combines elements of classic rock, prog rock, blues, stoner, and metal in their music. If their musical style was a human life form, it would be the love child of Deep Floyd, The Black Doors, and Led Sabbath. Slayer and Monty Python were the nannies.” Now if that doesn’t get you intrigued in what is going on, what will? This album nearly didn’t make it, as the band were screwed over by a Canadian promoter/manager which meant their first album looked it was going to be their last. But things worked out and they again worked with producer Colin Tench. Even before listening to this I was already looking forward to it, given the artwork alone, which is incredibly Pythonesque and vibrant. Musically this doesn’t sound as if it was released in 2015, as if I had been asked to guess I would have said it was no later than 1972. It contains fuzzed psychedelia, prog, and a wonderful sense of humour. During “A Wooden Groove”, singer (guitarist, keyboard player) Stef Flaming intones “the rest of this song will be instrumental, mental, mental…) and he is right! No more words! I love it when bands refuse to take themselves too seriously, and here we have an album which contains real weight, a solidity of mahogany as opposed to the lightness of something disposable and plastic. At times the band look at each other, then it is heads down and the devil take the hindmost: it isn’t Slayer but is the sound of a band having a blast. They can be reflective when they want, but always in that late Sixties/early Seventies vogue, with just the production and some of the guitar sounds letting the listener know that this is actually a modern release and not something from all that time ago. Real music, made by real musicians, this is both accessible and a real grower, and ones that fans of that ear definitely need to seek out.