ICE RITUAL

2,5 stars really!!!

Without wanting to sound too harsh this album proves the one thing I was afraid of. Dark Sun are nothing more than a Hawkwind tribute band. Ice Ritual (sounds familiar, eh?) is a live album, with only one Dark Sun song. The rest of the stuff is Hawkwind's material. One cannot help but wonder what is the purpose of this album?

As far as I know, Hawkwind have released 15-30 live albums throughout their exhausting career, so what on earth can Dark Sun give us that those albums don't already have? Well, beats me, to be honest. The fact that they managed to get Nik Turner to do the vocals here is great and it's the one thing that separates Ice Ritual from other Hawkwind tribute albums. But still... If Dark Sun would've tried to do something really daring and new with these songs, I could understand the need to release this album, but no... The songs are more or less carbon copy's of the original versions.

But let's put all this aside for a second. Had this been a Hawkwind album or had the songs been Dark Sun's own material, I would have given this at least three stars. Maybe even the fourth one on a sunny day. The band plays really well, with great, warm interplay and the whole concert has a very energetic feel. Turner performs his duties nicely, although he sings out of tune a couple of times. This must have been a fun gig to attend.

The album has many highlights, including D-Rider, Assault And Battery, Golden Void and the only Dark Sun track, Dream Circuit. It's actually a studio track, showing their more electronic side and reminding me more of Ozric Tentacles and Hidria Spacefolk than Hawkwind.

So, all I can say that this is an interesting live album, and it breaks my heart to give this album such a low rating, but in my eyes (and ears), Ice Ritual is unfortunately just a pointless release. If you still want to hear a live album full of Hawkwind's classics, then by all means, do check this out as this is better than some of Hawkwind's own live albums, but I'm afraid I cannot recommend Ice Ritual to others.

I believe Dark Sun are making a new album right now. Hopefully they'll try something more daring this time.

I liked quite much this live album of The Finnish group Dark Sun, the devoted disciples of mythical space rock legend Hawkwind. It is great that Nik Turner played with the band also, bringing an original element from the seventies to these tribute sounds. The versions of the Hawkwind songs here are musically good, and follow the original style quite faithfully. Musically there are really great jam sequences captured here, mostly I liked the hypnotic aural causeways allowing Nik to blast out saxophone solos. Also there's a really nice crunchy sound in bass guitar, especially in the song "Psychedelic Warlords". The conjured electronic space tones are also quite pleasant, and the group plays together very well. I personally think that the biggest value of tribute-oriented bands might be giving fine concert experiences for those fans, which cannot time warp to 1970's Stonehenge to see the original thing. Another aspect of covering would be doing new arrangements from very different perspective, but this is not the case here, and I feel uncomfortable with this approach to that music which feels sacred for myself. Maybe due this attitude of mine I liked this live recording more than the earlier studio album of this band I heard. This enthusiasm is enhanced quite strongly with the personal nostalgia value to me, as I participated some of these gigs in the late 1990s'. In the clubs there were interesting possibilities, for example disappearing to the smoke attempting to participate dancing with charming hippie ladies, or engaging to civilized discussions with local Lemmy clones, possibly reaching intellectual heights of enlightenment era philosophers' debates; All this surrounded by the sonic attack of most awesome space rock tunes. Even here in the record audience voices out loudly the enjoyment, and they were really great happenings. Would be fun to hear the limited pressing "Astral Visions" CD's also, as the last track is not from the concerts, but band's own studio jam with Nik, sounding extraordinary fine. If you are a Hawkwind fanatic, consider checking out this record drilling nicely to the core of your most sacred source of fascination. I have understood the band has not been very active lately, but luckily the members of this group are very active in local psychedelic scene, and they have arranged many fine clubs with prolific selection of international and local psychedelic bands. So onward flies the bird, one way or another.