Review: Fungal Abyss - Bardo Abgrund Temple (Translinguistic Other, 2011)

Fungal Abyss’ Bardo Abgrund Temple is a perfect documentary of how psychedelic mushrooms can affect the creative process. In the j-card the band openly admits that they have ingested hallucinogenic mushrooms before recording, which is truly a bold statement in the times when drugs in music are, of course, still being used, but it is just not considered cool anymore to brag about using them in creating (marijuana being an exception). This band came back to the roots of conjuring enlightened sounds under the influence of psychedelic substances. Natural ones – the term “shroom rock” comes to mind. By the way, “Fungal Abyss” is one of the coolest band names I’ve heard in a loooong time. Not only as a name for a psych band – but a name for a heavy psych band. And what a heavy psych it is!

Being the sister band, the more psychedelic counterpart of the sludge band Lesbian, Fungal Abyss took the bass-heavy, stoner-y sound from Lesbian and filtered it through a prism of primordial, ethnic visions and fungal manifestations. The result of those manifestations are two sides of the cassette, each a bit over 30 minutes, filled with four tracks with length ranging from over 10 minutes to 24 minutes long. The jams on the tape seems to have no end, and it’s all for the better. Now that fans of lengthy jams are delighted, here’s something more: this cassette is an El Dorado for all fans of reverb and delay. There are many ambient-ish moments on the album, especially at the beginning of the tracks, where guitar drones mix with strange samples and snippets. The resulting introductory meditation are eerily similar to the calm opening parts of Ash Ra Tempel’s 1971 monster “Amboss” off their self-titled LP. At certain moments the music hits blatantly stoner territories, with “Timewave Zero” being a slow, bassy jam filled with blurry, echoed vocals that resemble CB radio conversations.

Bardo Abgrund Temple might quite possibly be the best psychedelic rock CASSETTE this year. The sound is perfectly mixed – you won’t find a drop of lo-fi here, only beautifully (or maybe beatifically?) recorded drums, sharp guitars and thumping bass guitar (which doesn’t drown out other sounds, mind you). Here is some true psych from the true shamans for whom the psychedelic experience is serious business – those guys are not your usual nice “dudes-next-door” who just happen to play a bit “trippy” sounds during a band practice after Sunday school. These dudes are real fuckin’ psychonauts who know how to pack a punch.  I mean just look at these fuckers:

Now go pick some shrooms and grab this cassette from Translinguistic Other. Or stream the entire album on Bandcamp. 

Fungal Abyss - Bardo Abgrund Temple

Link taken from Trippy Jam.