Review: Lord Elephant ‘Ultra Soul’
Florence, Italy’s chasm-opening, instrumental, cosmic doom trio, Lord Elephant, return with their second full-length, released once again through Heavy Psych Sounds.
I enjoyed their debut, 2022’s Cosmic Awakening, and as the universe sometimes works, they recently showed up on one of my work playlists. Just as I found myself thinking, ‘These guys are about due for a new album as it’s been a while,’ Ultra Soul appeared in The Sleeping Shaman review portal.
Lord Elephant – Leandro Gaccione (guitar), Edoardo De Nardi (bass), and Tommaso Urzino (drums) – clearly spent the last four years honing their craft as their new album takes everything that ruled about their debut and blasts it into space. Beginning this auditory odyssey with the one-two punch of opener Electric Dunes and Gigantia. The former sounding exactly like its title – slowly twinkling into life, before building into a huge, psychedelic vortex of swirling guitar leads, effects and nuanced, low-end wallop.
This eventually explodes into Gigantia, wherein it feels like the musical equivalent of the band literally blowing the roof off of whatever structure the listener may find themselves in. The rhythm section of De Nardi and Urzino serves up an exercise in controlled, heavy, low-end chaos, with attitude, intensity and sophistication. It then allows Gaccione to riff away, guiding this massive, musical beast through a kaleidoscope of riffage and psychedelic breakdowns. All of this, and we’re only two songs in.
Up next is Smoke Tower – a massive, psychedelic, riff-battering that features a great, late-song, space out with some tasty, cosmic shred, before pummeling the listener into dust again on the way out. It must be noted that the power trio are so fluid in their musical movements that when going from a riff assault to floaty, cosmic passages, it never feels jarring, which is not always the case across this genre.
an aural nebula of rumbling, trippy vibes, and nodding, psychedelic lead work…
Black River Blues, also sounding like its title, features an epic, crushing, western-ish vibe that they ride throughout its many twists and turns, propelled by a jaw-dropping avalanche of drums. Lest the low end feel buried by the rhythm of the drumming, Astralopens with some wicked, fuzzy, rumbling bass, before the trio once again brings the proverbial hammer down. Once again, they find themselves drifting through an aural nebula of rumbling, trippy vibes, and nodding, psychedelic lead work.
As we reach the home stretch with the penultimate MindNight, the band stretches their gigantic riff-groove to a spacey mid-section and back. Closer Leave proffers some dreamy, almost melancholy energy, complete with cathartic, psychedelic shred that actually had me recalling the tone and execution of the legendary late Funkadelic guitar wizard Eddie Hazel – which is about as high a compliment as I can pay. But they are a cosmic doom band at the end of the day, and they proceed to build the song up, taking the listener on an awesome sonic journey. All three musicians sound absolutely fantastic as they bring this towering album to a close
Lord Elephant clearly spent the four years between albums taking their sound up to the next level as every single track on Ultra Soul is heavy, immense, vast and ethereal – sometimes covering all this multiple times through a single song. The tones displayed are otherworldly, with all three musicians sounding amazing, but I have to give some extra flowers to Urzino, as his drum sound and performance were as good as anything I’ve listened to recently.
Instrumental stoner rock can sometimes get redundant, but that’s not what’s going on here. I suppose if one wanted to nitpick, an astute listener may find them a tad formulaic in their approach. But with so many layers to their sound, the fluidity of their aural efforts, to say nothing of their overall talent, any such idea is quickly blown out of the band’s proverbial airlock. It seems Heavy Psych Sounds have done it yet again, as the four-year hiatus between records was well worth the wait.
Label: Heavy Psych Sounds
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Martin Williams
