Seven That Spells – The Men From Dystopia (Beta-Lactam Ring) 1.25.08 Keith Boyd

Goodness Gracious it’s been a long while since I’ve heard such mangled beauty. It’s as though these Croatian freaks (along with Kawabata and Tsuyama from the ALMIGHTY Acid Mother’s Temple!!) have taken every rural folk song from their country, dipped it straight into some gooey psychedelic lightshow liquid and commenced to sprinkle it over their heads.

The going gets weird right away with some plucked sitar and tambura. These lines of brain massaging melody run smack into a pounding mono-riff from Hell and subsequently ride on waves of plinking, plonking and swishing synth lines. Although it’s divided into 5 separate tracks there is no real division here. It’s all one big MASSIVE meltdown and psychedelic endurance test. The guitar is a high light, letting loose with crazy and way over the top solos. These are of course some of the high lights of the disc. It’s as though every Hendrix lick ever recorded has been condensed into one blurry laser gun blast and it’s aimed at a pack of wild cavemen who scatter to the four corners of the Earth to found new religions based on feedback and volume.

There’s no real letup for the whole 70 plus minute ride. You simply sit down, strap in and hold on. Or don’t… Maybe you should just crank this sucker up and let it blast all of the talk of recession/stimulus, Hilary/Obama, Love/Hate, Right/Wrong and any other notion right out of the folds of your over stimulated brain. Let the walls come crumbling down for a change. We could spend weeks analyzing this molten chunk of spiky psychedelia but why bother? It’s more enjoyable to simply let these freak-power currents give your nervous system a reset and boost.

Listen to some at the Beta-Lactam Ring site