Short Reviews [The Grand Astoria / Montenegro - 2014 - "The Grand Astoria / Montenegro"]

This is an interesting release from No Name, as in many ways from a physical perspective it is a CD-sized album. It comes in a cardboard sleeve (which has the details printed on the spine), the CD itself is printed on one side so it looks like a record, and it is held inside an inner sleeve which contains the details of who played on it, when it was recorded etc., and this care and attention to detail certainly adds to the enjoyment for me. A split release, it features just two songs, but the one from The Grand Astoria is nearly 30 minutes long while Montenegro’s is nearly 19. Although both bands are heavily influenced by doom, stoner and psychedelic genres together with bands such as Blue Cheer, Sabbath, Kyuss and Hawkwind, geographically they are remote from each other was while The Grand Astoria are from Russia, Montenegro are from Argentina, and both songs were recorded in 2014. No name are rapidly becoming one of my favourite labels, and this cleanly-produced album is yet another example of why that is. For one reason or another it has taken me much longer than usual to get around to reviewing this, so subsequently have played it far more than I would usually prior to reviewing it and have found the more I played it the more I enjoyed it. The first few times I felt the bands were meandering without any purpose, but gradually I became more enamoured about what I was hearing. The bands are quite different, yet very related in what they are doing, and the lack of acclaim for this release (which is now some five years old) is not a reflection in the quality of the music contained within. For fans of stoner and doom this split release is definitely worthy of further investigation.