If 2009 is the year of Darwin and his revolutionary book ‘The Origin Of Species’, then 2010 must be the year of Galilei Galilei. Because then it’s exactly 400 years ago that Galilei published his observations through the telescope about the moon, the stars, the Milky Way and the moons of Jupiter in is ground-breaking (and at that time obviously castigated) book ’Sidereus Nuncius’ (Sidereal Messenger)’. The perfect soundtrack for this commemoration has already been made by the Dutch Wizards Of Oss; Astrosonic from the small city Oss.
The band took 3,5 years to come up with a follow up for the unanimous highly acclaimed ’Speeder People’, but it’s definitely worth the wait. Especially the fourteen minutes of ‘As Soon As They Got Airborne…’ is a sonic space journey that ties together the forty years of Neil Armstrong and Hawkwind, the hundred and forty years of Jules Verne, the four hundred years of Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler, and the four thousand years of Maya predictions into a hallucinating trip of intoxicating Ozric mushrooms, Floydian guitar fumigates and BBC sci-fi radio samples from the fifties. All mind-blowing drugs are irrelevant compared with this audible adventure. Minimalistic space rock with maximum effect.
Also opening track ‘Faustian Bargain’ (with a key-theme that strongly resembles the atmosphere of the famous Doctor Who tune) is fantastic space rock, and actually a continuation of ‘Quadrant EL 6500’, the closing track on ‘Speeder People’. The next song ‘Cloud Of Decay’ dives in a different way into the depths, namely with extremely low sounding guitars. This sounds like Godflesh got the groove! Although it doesn’t crush your pelvis like the furious rocker ‘Play It Straight’. Hell yeah! The band also isn’t afraid to incorporate country influences in their swamp-like mud grooves (pedal steel in ‘Bloom’), and their former singer Erik de Vocht guests as the lead singer on ‘Lured’. Although Fred van Bergen took over most vocals, Erik still got it!
The most remarkable song is ‘Zero’, which is recorded by two bands. On your right channel you hear Astrosoniq, but on your left channel your hear Dutch stoner-grungers Zeus playing the same song, but in another time signature. Still you can listen to this song in stereo. Although this is quite unique and I’ve never heard such experiment before, the results aren’t that confusing for my ears as expected. They also recorded a cover, ‘Bored’, but it’s in fact not really a cover. It’s originally a song from the sole album ‘Drown!’ (1998) of T-Nailed, and that band is in some way the embryonic version of Astrosonic. So it’s more like re-recording. ‘Zero’, ‘Bored’ as well as some other songs of the second part of the album are good, but not as crushingly devastating as the first four songs of the album. Although the closing song, ‘Sin’, is almost as brilliant with its opening as a sinister power ballad from Monster Magnet, and evolving into a four-minute miniature epic with heat-vibrating guitar storms.
The (shorter) second part of the album tempers a little my euphoric state that was caused by the first half an hour, but the total result is still powerful and explosive enough for a small supernova in the hard rock landscapes. This is a journey into space that will even make Stephen Hawking swing like a bad ass motherfunker!
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