Review: Black Magic Six ‘Black Cloud Descending’
Let’s pretend for a second that Dick Dale is on a soul-searching vision quest in the middle of Death Valley. He picks up a desert drifter and when he spins off into the horizon, he realizes it’s Tom Waits. The dotted lines they pass have spiralled into full-fledged, white line fever as they both morph into skeleton cowboys at high speeds. The picturesque starry backdrop dissipates behind them, and in front of them await two golden doors in front of a galactic casino with showgirls. By now, they have managed to mix up ‘Surf Queen’ on a bet with this third album Black Cloud Descending. It’s gotta space-punk, steamsurf edge to it, and too hard to pass up as an innocent bystander watching the ruckus filmed in a grainy effect, and from your backyard with tiki torches blazing.
The pair from Finland start gambling with Shane MacGowan right beside them. The tune titled Full House Blues is like being suckered on the blackjack tables. Prospects are looking dim around them, but the stage lights come on and showgirls wearing feather boas with clown noses come out for a performance. The soundtrack is Black Magic Six’s intro to Forsaken Land. It’s a primitive raw beat the whole song through but creeps and crawls around the depravity in the wicked ways of mankind on this foreign, abstract planet they left behind.
Long gone, and funneling beer bongs they stumble out of there only to bumble around on a boardwalk aligned with a space ocean. Landback Pond is the kind of tune that any car club member could bebop around to in their rat rod on their way back home from a pub crawl. On top of this, it’s Black Magic Six’s cyberbilly cow punk handbook, prescribed only for the Lonely-Hearts Club members who are unable to wither and waddle their lives away to the mystery. Some are not even out there trying to figure it all out, but this duo have done so through Svart Records. They’re not trapped in the delusion that this infrastructure is built in our favor but molding their own illusion right out in front of them.
It’s a primitive raw beat…
They came from past albums, such as Doomsday Bound and are humbled to be our muse for our regular ol’ psycho-space garage rock circus life attendance. All of which is part of an even grander illusion that not one human has ever been able to grasp. This brings me to mention the albums self-titled track Black Cloud Descending before I head for the clouds and out of here. It’s hard to believe a two-piece can sound like Nine Pound Hammer or The Hookers and this stripped-down, but it happened. Not even Nashville Pussy churned out a black magic six-piece being a four-piece, but they shredded like the thousand punk-fried metalheads that always stood in front of them.
It happened, and it happened without us all even looking, like cactus juice, these magical space renegades swilled to obtain enough rocket fuel to get back to their destination by the end of their glittery apocalyptic album, ending with an ultra-booze explosion. It reminds me to flick off my pink flip flops, jump on the next surfboard to catch a rail heading to a space station with a nudey bar and using this to justify the gamblin’ rose playlist for the infinite expedition. One may or may not return from listening to Black Cloud Descending.
Label: Svart Records
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Spring ‘The Strutter’ Chase
