Labels: Invada Records
Review by: Kunal Nandi
Of all the people you’d expect to be a fan of Black Sabbath, I doubt you’d expect to find trip-hop legend Geoff Barrow of Portishead-fame to be anywhere near the top of the list. But there he must be, because Invada is his label, and this album is its second release.
Of all the people you’d expect to NOT be a fan of Black Sabbath, I doubt you’d find members of Gonga, but there they were, sat opposite Zane fucking Lowe one night at BBC Radio One, denouncing the Brummie godfathers of everything dark, heavy and doom-ridden. That is some weird shit, because everything from the naturalistic artwork to the retro-flavoured warmth of the production job smacks of old-school stoner rock, but not in a bad way. Gonga are looking forward too, much in the same way that Kyuss (who they DO
admit to liking, thanks be to Satan) did.
Gonga are all about riffs and atmosphere, though it seems that they don’t intersect too often on their Venn diagram of rock. When they get going up to a rollicking pace, like on the single “Stratofortress”, they hook you in with some good old twiddly, catchy riffs, pinned down by an awesome rhythm
section that’s good and loose, whilst keeping a rein on things at the same time.
When they take it slow, they take it real slow. It becomes a totally dense bonged-out smoky fug of feedback and fooling about. Gonga feature a very talented guitarist who is given free rein in most of the songs, unafraid to go all-out with some seriously lengthy solos, with the result that the
vocals don’t feature too prominently. That’s a bit of a shame because they are of the cool, raspy, emotional variety, and the guy can certainly hold a tune, although many times it seems like the melody was an afterthought to fit the main riff.
Don’t let Zane put you off though. Check them out.