Nighthawk – Structures On The Moon
Nighthawk – Structures On The Moon
Sliptrick Records
Release Date: 19/12/23
Running Time: 19:46
Review by Dark Juan
4/10
Good afternoon, dear friends from all over this spinning blue marble careening across the cosmos. I am Dark Juan and I write things. Many, many things, about all kinds of subjects, but I only share the very finest of my ruminations with you. Normally about music, apart from the rare times when I am unleashed to write opinion pieces. This rarely goes well because Dark Juan is a man of very deeply entrenched liberal notions and frequently manages to piss off whole populations. This would bother a normal person. It does not concern Dark Juan because of his singular belief in being right. This normally annoys Mrs Dark Juan to no end. Especially because she is right far more often than I am. She is a woman of extreme good sense and considerable wisdom. Dark Juan lacks wisdom because he is a massive overgrown child who still finds farts funny.
Nevertheless, Dark Juan endeavours to bring you good things, and it is with this in mind that the Astral Travelling Platter Of Splatter ™ is whirling like a spiral galaxy, emitting shards of hard light and even harder radiation while it plays the freshman release, entitled “Structures On The Moon”, from American Psychedelic Fuzz Metal trio Nighthawk. Let us embark on an exploration of the outer reaches of the known universe together with this record being our soundtrack to our trip to Ophiuchus…
This offering opens with ‘Unicomfort’, being a two-minute instrumental of echo and noodling with a subtle synth backing which leads into ‘The Awakening’, which is all crunchy guitars and a very odd little drum break which makes Dark Juan frown as it is if as fucking pointless as it is redundant. This thirty-second-ish interlude then fades into ‘Buried Alive (Shattered Sky)’ where the band decide to put down their joints and actually fucking play a bit. It’s a decent enough tune although there is too much moving from molasses-slow riffing and heartfelt, plaintive vocals to speeding up again and then once more hitting the brakes. It also suffers from a distinct lack of focus at the end of the song, descending into some random bashing of instruments, rather than coming to a natural halt.
‘Hand Puppets Maiden’ is a groove laden trip into who fucking knows what kind of LSD-raddled mental hinterlands. It has a cheerful, bouncy central riff that hints at the likes of Wolfmother and is rather more Psychedelic than most of the other songs on this record, in fact Dark Juan considers it the highlight of the whole shebang being as it is catchy, insistent and much more fun than the rest of the music on here – ‘Buried Alive (Adrift) (as well as being a companion piece to ‘Buried Alive (Shattered Sky) and being almost indistinguishable to it) is rather heavier, ponderous, and slow and not unlike listening to a slowed down, heavied up Sonic Flower in the intro, although the band picks up their metaphorical skirts and spanks along quite briskly in parts. There’s some neat soloing along the way as well and this enhances, rather than degrades the song.
‘Supa-a-star’ closes out the album and this song flirts with Flower Power, Alt Rock and Power Pop with its heavily flanged clean guitar sound overlaid with a dreamy, fluid, heavily stoned electric guitar line over the top of it. There are no words here, just atmospheric, mist-like wafting not unlike the Large Magellanic Cloud – 50 Kiloparsecs of ethereal, interstellar mist just… existing out in the vast coldness of space with nothing around it for light years in any direction.
However, this is a deeply flawed beast. I don’t like the guitar sound on the heavier songs – it is too clean and crunchy and dare I say it, too Metal for the music. I can’t hear the bass drum at all and the drums and the vocals sit too far back in the mix – it is all guitar and not a great deal else, and this just compounds the fact that the guitar sound is just plain wrong for the heavier tunes on the record. There’s also far too much fucking about with interludes and generally pratting about. Three of the tunes on this record (supposedly an album according to the blurb – Dark Juan would class this as a maxi-EP at best) last less than three minutes and don’t actually seem to go anywhere. There is a lack of musical narrative that is irritating to Dark Juan. Regular readers will know my deep and abiding love of all things Psychedelic, but even that has to have some kind of form and structure – too many of Nighthawk’s songs end with them sounding like they have just chucked bass, guitar and drumsticks into a corner and have fucked off to get baked some more.
To conclude then, there is much potential here. If the band junked the more Doomy elements of their sound and concentrated on the woozy, doozy Psychedelics then they would sound much more cohesive and a metric fuckton better than this record suggests. It is no coincidence that far and away the best song on this record is the one where they stick to a single style. Nighthawk also need to pack in the fannying about with short numbers that don’t actually enhance anything. Disappointing in the extreme.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards Nighthawk 4/10 for a mediocre record that could do with three of the tracks being binned and the band concentrating on writing proper tunes.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Unicomfort
02. The Awakening
03. Buried Alive (Shattered Sky)
04. Hand Puppets Maiden
05. The Middleman’s Universe (Short)
06. Buried Alive (Adrift)
07. Supa-a-star
LINE-UP:
Mark V Madsen – Guitar/Vocals
Eric Olson – Bass/Vocals
Erik Olsen – 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 said party. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
