Review: Carcaño ‘By Order Of The Green Goddess’
Italian stoner riffians Carcaño take us down a weird week and a day on By Order of the Green Goddess. Their Self-Titled debut album was a thirty-two-minute-long odyssey into a dark part of the human psyche. This forty-two-minute experience is called an EP and features a cool day-to-day theme. If anyone comments with ‘well actually an album is this and an EP is that’ be sure to voice your opinions in great detail and I’ll make fun of you while I stay home on New Year’s Eve and silently glare at fireworks going off in city limits.
Day 1: The Beginning instantly I hear Flaming Lips from their Embryonic album blended with Piper At The Gates Of Dawn era Pink Floyd and some Black Sabbath for good measure. The rumble of the guitar bubbles over into a tasty groove until a tale begins to unfold of travels to another planet. Each word is delivered withdrawn and despondent that I find I’m in more of a stupor than anything. A breakdown that’s so flimsy, it starts upping my anxiety with tales of taking drugs on Mars as I stare deeply at my walls looking for a pattern for my brain to lock onto.
Doomy Day 2: Riding Space Elephants booms with a heaven rattling riff that goes harder than before. Vocal effects are ramped up and our acid-soaked landscape is painted into a piece of art that sucks you in. Tripping further into psychedelia Day 3: Green Grace begins with a freak out until reverberated vocals enter that completely throw me off balance and I realize my eyes haven’t moved from a tiny speck on my wall. Luckily Day 4: The Birth grounds me with its desperation. Vocals still feeling withdrawn grow taller and taller like metaphorical layers onto my building of anxiety. The speed ramps up. The malaise drenched echoes won’t stop dancing and I realize I’ve just been staring for twenty-five minutes.
The rumble of the guitar bubbles over into a tasty groove…
Day 5: The Son Of The Sun feels zippy and features a cowbell. This circus is firing on all cylinders until a wall of sadness stops everything in its tracks. The lonely Day 6: I Don’t Belong Here is a vacuuming journey that earns the song’s title. Day 6 creeps at a bizarre pace that seems allergic to a proper time signature. Each sound is sprinkled in like colored water into a pool of oil.
Day 7: Wasted Land is a harrowing melting experience. It’s like being trapped inside a music box in a forgotten burning room. Time signatures straighten out to a slow drudge that’s suffocating and thick. Ending with the frantic Day 8: Running Back Home leaves me feeling even more lost than before. Like this past week into vices or oblivion was a failed experiment, but one that still needed to be had.
This was a dark listen for me, personally. Tones and themes that revel in self-destructive behaviors really have a way of getting under my skin. Maybe this is to show what it’s like to walk around in someone else’s shoes for a mile… or eight days. Or maybe I’m making this about me a bit too much. This is not an instant love album. It’s gritty. Heartbreaking. Creepy. It took me five solid listens before I started really absorbing it. But after it planted itself in me, I could really appreciate the filth and see the hidden beauty. What a way to ring in the new year.
Label: Clostridium Records
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram
Scribed by: Richard Murray
