Warfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmares – The Soundtrack to the Collapse of the Sixties!
Music Review:
Many years ago, I used to dig out a few gems from the soils of time, released in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, clean them off and review them for everyone. I always tried to make sure the album or artists had a kind of horror connection, for instance Coven (see Coven: Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls album review) whom were a pure Satanic band, releasing a complex and deep LP of pacts and curses, and Crow (see Crow: Crow Music album review), which is solid hard rock and biker sounds, sounding like the soundtrack to a Roger Corman flick, amongst others.
More recently I’ve concentrated more on Death Metal, but neglected the heavy amount of psychedelic stuff, hard rock, prog, and other wild and crazy noises from the late ‘60s and ‘70s that I have in my collection. So, today I’m bringing something which I genuinely call an essential must own for anyone who loves rock or metal because there’s a lot of bad ass riffs and vocals going on within this compilation. Fancy a history lesson? Warfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmares is the lesson straight after Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Jimi Hendrix.
“As the hippie movement hurtled towards its imminent demise, bad vibes infiltrated the rock world. Tainted LSD, loud motorcycles, and a series of brutal deaths spawned inspiration for guitar-wielding teenagers across the globe. Implementing deafening fuzz and satanic screams to create their proto-metal monstrosities, short-lived stoner bands pressed their lysergic experiments in microscopic quantities before blacking out entirely. Lifted from the ashes of the acid rock hell fire are 18 distorted tales of dope fiends, pill poppers, and the baddest of trips…” thus goes the quoted blurb on Rough Trade’s website and it serves as an introduction to what lays waiting.
This is the hard rock underground, ladies and gents, accompanied by a forty-page booklet that has an introduction which delves deeper than the quote up above, pinpointing some of the build-up events and the catastrophic death of Meredith Hunter, one of two happenings that many say signalled the fall of the hippie movement — the other being the Manson Family.
Many of the bands here only released a handful of songs before frying their brains, balls and egos, others just never gained the momentum and respect that others grabbed and rode along with. Portuguese band, Xarhanga, are the first out of the gate to chew your face off with the title of this compilation, Warfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmares. Screeching music, guitars hammering, the vocals by Carlos Cavalheiro, scream Ian (Deep Purple) Gillan but it’s the use of organ and cords via Julio Pereira that truly nails this.
The fuzz guitar and tinny demo tape sounding drums of Novak’s Kapelle is a delight. Their tune, Hypodermic Needle from 1968 could belong in any trippy London film from that era. Not bad for an Austrian collective. They capture the feel and music to perfection, along with a gruelling set of lyrics. A mish mash of prog rock, blues, and something else altogether. Following on such insanity comes the brooding, Dark Dawn by Whistler’s Mother which tunes things up totally differently (adding cowbells for no reason whatsoever here and there) with a small splash of Eight Miles High by The Byrds. This song is a build up of alienation and pain.
After that, Brass Alley and Gift offer us a bit more up-tempo creations, Pink Pills and Drugs being the former and latter. Hmm, talk about running themes. As bouncy as Drugs is, the message is clear because, as singer, Helmuth Treichel said, he’d witnessed so many friends by 1972 die or become imprisoned because of it. “Ask yourself, if it’s wrong or right.” goes the chorus.
Warfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmares has so many bands but so little time in this review. Each one is a banger. Nothing falters. Some mellow, others hyperactive, but if you love this period in music, I don’t think you’ll want to skip any. Outstanding mentions go to, Acid, musically belonging to the old school UK biker movie, Psychomania (see Psychomania review on DVD from Geneon) “You won’t cry a tear, acid is here…” and The Ritual with their galloping head nodding mind fuck, Speed Freak. “Save me God from speeding to hell….” The Ritual were pals with a few Hells Angels and were introduced to hard drugs via the motorcycle gang. Their live show also consisted of one of their roadies blowing fire into the air — on a par almost with Hawkwind who had Stacia stood sometimes nude, painted and shaking on stage whilst they performed. Lest I forget the one-off oddity, Purple Sun whose song Dooms Day is something remarkable and so frikkin different to everything else, it’s a shame this band blinked out of existence. How much fuzz can your ears take???!!!
Warfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmares is a Duracell battery totally unstoppable in power and out of control. Each track has been polished and mastered from sources like a lone 7″ single, or from ex-band members. Just like the best grindhouse flick DVD, a bit of grain has been left in, enough to make you feel the era. Numero Group / aka Nb specialise in obscure little weirdies, they’re kind of like a Something Weird Video of music.
This is worth the price of admission alone is the stunning artwork by Benjamin Marra. The label approached Benjamin with a few outlines such as, “…a 1960s-era motorcycle madman riding through some kind of dystopian, drug-fuelled nightmare. We’d love to see crumbling city structures, with hypodermic needles and bongs mixed in as buildings and pills flying through the air…” He fucking delivered all this and more!
Lay back and listen as the world swirls into chaos and images.
Warfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmares is available on eBay and Amazon, but also from their website (the LP comes with a choice of many colors): Acid Nightmares.
Here’s a few samples of the bad trips:
Album Info:
Band: Various
Album: Warfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmares
Compiled by: Blake Rhein, Rob Sevier
Produced by: Blake Rhein, Rob Sevier, Ken Shipley
Mastered by: Jeff Lipton, Marina Rice
Artwork: Benjamin Marra
Year: 2017
Country: USA
Runtime: 1h 12min
Label: Numero Group
Track Listing:
01. Xarhanga – Acid Nightmare
02. Novak’s Kapelle – Hypodermic Needle
03. Whistlers Mother – Dark Dawn
04. Brass Alley – Pink Pills
05. Gift – Drugs
06. Supa Chief – Red Brained Woman
07. TNS – Time’s Up
08. Acid – Acid
09. Sardonicus – Evaporated Brain
10. Mass Temper – Grave Digger
11. Goliath – Dead Drunk Screamin’
12. Bulbous Creation – Hooked
13. The Ritual – Speed Freak
14. Gollum – Prayer of Despair
15. Crossblood Experiment – Orange Sunshine
16. Purple Sun – Dooms Day
17. The Shy Guys – Black Lightning Light
18. Sunn Cycle – Acid Raga
