Deadly Vipers – Low City Drone
Deadly Vipers – Low City Drone
Fuzzorama Records
Release Date: 30/09/22
Running Time: 43:32
Review by Dark Juan
8/10
Greetings and salutations. Hello, good afternoon and welcome. It is I, Dark Juan, Satanist to toffs and gentry, writing to you from a United Kingdom that has supposedly come together in grief because an old lady with an expensive hat has shuffled off her mortal coil and now we have a wingnut-headed bloke supposed to be graced by (the false) God to rule over us and wear a similarly expensive hat and live in a number of large houses where, for a fee, foreigners can come and gawp at, and get in the way of, serving soldiers wearing equally ridiculous headgear. It will not surprise you to note that Dark Juan has little time for all this nonsense and is violently opposed to the thought of any unelected person calling me their subject. However, Dark Juan is somewhat outnumbered by the Life Guards and the Household Troop of the Cavalry and therefore has to sit, seething and plotting the downfall of government and monarchy, in the kitchen at Dark Juan Terrace with a nice cup of tea. I don’t have a forelock to tug and I have no fucks to give. Monarchy is an outmoded and frankly reprehensible concept. As for the Church…
…They can go fuck themselves crossways. I discovered (because I am in the process of obtaining a new base of operations as SIS have this one covered now) that part of the conveyancing job is to search and indemnify the purchaser of a house against chancel repair liability. This is the fucking dress wearing, god bothering freaks basically telling homeowners that they are responsible for paying to have the fucking local church repaired and this can be done even now, despite it being a 16th Century law. Dark Juan states now that if the sky daddy fetishists want their church fixing from his hard-earned, they are going to find it difficult to repair something that has been burned to the ground. Fuck the Church. If they want to fix their sky daddy’s pleasure palace (where all his littles kneel and beg Daddy for forgiveness and promise they will be good littles otherwise they will be punished – full on kink or what?) then the fucking Church can bloody well pay for it. Yet another reason to be a Satanist…
Deadly Vipers (clearly fans of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films) are from Perpignan, France and they play Stoner Rock of such fuzziness my headphones have grown a beard all of their own and already I am kneeling before the sacred altar of the groove. Opening with instrumental track ‘Echoes From Wasteland’, Deadly Vipers set their stall out in no uncertain terms. A gentle guitar refrain crashes into the kind of valve-driven fuzz that makes you want to light up a doobie and just chill, man. However, this is a rather simplistic description of the aural delights contained within “Low City Drone” being as it encompasses the psychedelic explorations of Hawkwind and combines them with the relaxed muscularity of Kyuss and the vocal angst of Pearl Jam. The nine-minute plus title track is the perfect song to showcase this, with its bass-led sound and humongous central riff, and the surprisingly high-pitched vocal of Fred. There’s also oodles of Hammond organ and regular readers will know that Dark Juan is partial to a bit of hammy O. He’s also partial to the cheese on toast he is eating right now. The song does do that Stoner thing where the band just follows where the groove takes them, but appears able to carry it off, rather than just meandering around a mescaline-fuelled middle eight until someone regains their senses enough to remember they are playing a Metal song, as is common in Stoner bands.
Deadly Vipers are a band who owe as much to Steppenwolf and The Doors as they do to Deftones and Monster Magnet. Their music has a pleasing vintage or retro quality that they have somehow made to also sound modern at the same time. It is also played with an easy confidence, the relaxed French insouciance they move with improving the listening experience, because some Stoner bands try too hard and it shows. Deadly Vipers lean into the music and close their eyes and let it take them. Production wise, the record is spot on, with a particularly meaty snare sound, although the drums do fade behind tube-screamers and string-bending now again but the tinware sounds fucking huge throughout, as does the bass, which makes the fat Anglais posterior vibrate like you have a certain kind of special sex toy in there. Filthy pervert. Yes, you. I need your number. For data protection matters, obviously….
‘Meteor Part II’ is very meaty indeed. Fuzz and overdriven bass collide with a tempo designed to crush continents beneath the feet of marching soldiery and is another instrumental piece which showcases the talents of David (guitar), Thomas (bass) and Vincent (drums) and indicates a band with sufficient self-belief to allow their music to just flow and not have to constantly have to distract the listener with vocals, whereas ‘Last Rise’ has lush backing vocals and a performance from Fred that could only be characterised as “committed”. As in he should be. Fred takes no prisoners with his singing and howls his little French heart out from the first bar to the drug-addled last. The bass driven middle eight is also worthy of note because I have never heard a bass guitar rumble quite so tremblingly before.
There are downsides, however. One of them being that the band rely far too much on the kind of stomping mid-paced tempo that all Stoner bands employ, and for all the neat little touches and key changes and everything, there’s a curious reluctance to properly let go, the band appearing sometimes to hold themselves back instead of properly attacking the music and their instruments. And the guitar sounds they employ sometimes change jarringly and noticeably rather than smoothly being integrated into the arrangement of the songs. ‘Ego Trip’ is particularly noteworthy for this and has the kind of middle section that Hawkwind at their most acid-addled would absolutely adore.
In conclusion, then, in Deadly Vipers we have a very good French band who just need to let themselves be a bit looser when they are playing. For all they play superior, relaxed Stoner Rock, they are too tight and wound-up to provide that louche, floppy music with the je ne sais quoi that makes Stoner Rock and Metal great. Granted this is normally a metric fuckton of LSD and weed. However, they sound fucking fantastic and have an absolute peach of a singer, and the songs are goooooood!
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Le système breveté d’évaluation des éclaboussures de sang Dark Juan) awards Deadly Vipers 8/10, as long as they don’t send Beatrix Kiddo after me…
TRACKLISTING:
01. Echoes From Wasteland
02. Atom
03. Low City Drone
04. Welli Welloo
05. Meteor Part II
06. Last Rise
07. Ego Trip
08. Big Empty
LINEUP:
Fred – Vocals
David – Guitar
Thomas – Bass
Rudy – Drums
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
