SEVEN THAT SPELLS

4.5 stars. This band has been functioning since 2003 and this is studio album number seven from 2010. From Croatia, Niko the guitarist/composer is the main musician here as this is his project. He's changed the lineup for every album up to this point. Still this record has connections to "Black Om Rising" mainly because of the sax and heavy, complex sound but there are differences. First Lovro the sax player is given much more freedom and prominence on here and the man is a little crazy. I mean dissonance is his middle name. In fact many tag this with Avant Jazz because of his work on here. The surprise was that psychedelic music on the first half of the 14 1/2 minute "The Abandoned World Of Automata". None of that psychedelia on "Black Om Rising" so that was a nice touch. I mean it just trips along mid- paced with that repeated guitar melody for 7 plus minutes. So good. By the way the sax player is on only three of their twelve studio albums.

This record is a blast from start to finish although the second last song "Death Star Narcolepsy" at over 9 1/2 minutes keeps me from giving that fifth star. By this point I'm not ready for the most intense song on the album, a relentlessly heavy and abrasive piece with maybe a couple of mini breaks from that. The closer "Quetzalcoatl" is the shortest but one of the better tracks at 3 minutes. It reminds me of KING CRIMSON's "Islands" with that sax and sound early on. Some amazing drum work on this one and throughout really. That was the one change from "Black Om Rising" a new drummer.

That opener "Olympos" is a killer at almost 9 minutes. A drum/bass intro as some industrial sounding sax joins in. Check out the drumming though. The sax starts getting dissonant then we hear a gong then here we go! Love the rest of this song as they hit us with a mid-paced, sax led beauty. Man this gets insane after 4 1/2 minutes, just some incredible intensity. The bass is crushing it. A calm around 6 1/2 minutes before an all out assault ends it. "G" is much like the opener and almost the same length. A catchy and heavy tune that is complex to boot. I mean check out the "Discipline" era KING CRIMSON style going on here but much heavier. The guitar ends up howling over top and the sax starts getting dissonant again late. More of all of this again on "Terenus Est" a track worth mentioning for sure and at 5 minutes a concise version of what went on before.

Not big on the inappropriate album covers, I get it, it's art but the music is what counts and this record is delivers in a huge way.

SEVEN THAT SPELLS is a band out of Croatia who began playing more of a Space Rock style even being on the Russian label R.A.I.G. for a couple of albums before changing their style radically on 2008's "Black Om rising". Colour me surprised the first time I spun this expecting some sort of Psychedelia and instead getting a blend of Post Rock/ Math Rock with some heavy and complex music. The wild card is the sax but it's not used as much as on 2010's "Future Retro Spasm" which is an insane album and my favourite by the band. Anyway this record has been re-issued the most so it has it's fans. Mastered by the legendary Tatsuya Yoshida who I'm sure appreciates the complexity and power. A four piece here and they never have the same lineup at least up to 2010. The guitarist adds synths while we also get bass, drums and sax.

"Fluxion" is a killer opener with the electronics to start before guitar and swirling synths join in followed by drums then bass before a minute. Bass solo before 4 minutes. A top three has to be "Ra" with the opening tribal drumming and pulsing sounds as other beats come and go. So cool sounding. Sax kicks in sounding great and it's screaming before 3 minutes. We get a three part "Lo" series with "Lo III" being another top three. Love that heavy rhythm section as the sax drones over top. Sax is ripping it up later and the bass is huge as it usually is. "Daktari" is my final top three opening with a seventies Jazz vibe but it's drowned by an avalanche of power including Post-Rock guitars. Check out the bass work before 2 minutes with those guitar expressions. Powerful atmosphere as well. The closer has a lot of soundscape stuff but it's kind of cool how it gets louder as it plays out. It does open with some powerful sounding bass, guitar and drums before it turns spacey at 2 1/2 minutes.

I'm looking forward to spending some time with "Future Retro Spasm" in a couple of weeks where they amp it up even more. Easily 4 stars.

This album offers a flashback to earlier collaboration of Kawabata Makoto and Niko Potočnjak from year 2007, allowing visuals of trinity formed from three monolithic stoner epics. The development towards relentless math-rock calculation is already prevailing under the surface, but main emphasis on this nocturnal glide upon motorways towards atavistic visions is still emphasized on acid oriented guitar massives and hypnotic rock dronings. Though the recordings are from same year as the marvelous "The Men from Dystopia" LP, the stonernauts of these sessions are different except for the two leading guitar slingers.

"The Wall" of sounds opens dynamically the highways to heaven, choral echoes curving the topography of logical rolling of mathematical rock sound textures. The instrumental tapestry relates powerfully to psychedelic sacral atmospherics, and the repetitive nuances of drum works give hints of the polygonal straits of Seven That Spell recordings done after these recordings. Screaming guitars flavor the glide on sonic surfaces pleasantly, casting shadowlike hints of form to basically quite singular and simple structure, still twisting with vivid details and shimmering with powerful energy, gaining strength from few thoughtful contrasting arrangement solutions.

"The Pyramid" starkly visible on the horizon of the motorway is cave-painted to the asphalt surfaces with archaic piety and reverence. Reverbed guitar chord weavings, tribal singing and Lovro Zlopasa's saxophone arise from the fog, introducing a slowly pulsing euphoric stoner passage, allowing the amplified phallus symbols explode to their grandest heights on the twenty minutes long admired observation of controlled chaos. This massive pulsing gains really carefully more force during the process, and the long process fades out with persistent runs on the chord progression, leaving a vast perception to echoes of the surrounding void.

Finally the "The Colossus" of all humankind's continuum and most respected giant figurine crashes to the field of vision from short euphoric oriental mantra. The level of aggression is again thrown to a quite heavy gear, and thick layer of multiple aural details flow on parallax layers, joining together with vast epic sound elements to the furious beating of the rhythm section. In the end the group leads to life-ensuring mass ejaculation, the motor vehicle crashing out from the lane, and leaving null fuzz of radiophonics ringing upon the accident scene.

What I liked especially on this album was the successful invocation of minimal conceptual offsets, really primeval forces emerging from the iconic controlled acid rock epics, and the potential of ideological associations built to all aspects of the album. On many Seven That Spells albums I have noted sequences which have associated with feeling of driving stoned on the freeway, guided by stars and the moon towards the inevitable destruction. On this album the whole focus has been paid to these elements with most successful erotic emphasis, making this my most favored release of this fine group along with their "The Men from Dystopia" double vinyl album. Thus I would recommend it for those enjoying minimal repetitive stoner rock and fans of music similar to the discography of Acid Mothers Temple collective.

Nice psych!

This is one of the two 2011 studio albums this cool Croatian band released, its name is "Acid Taking and Sweet Love Making which consists of five compositions that make a total time of 51 minutes. It kicks off with "Let's Go to San Francisco", a song which since the first moments the band spread a bombastic psychedelic sound, with great guitar riffs and a fast sound. The curious is that after a minute and a half they put a strange change, the music almost vanishes and a soft passage appears with a female voice; seconds later raw guitars reappear and the jam and psych sound enters once again.

"Hell from Jazz" is the longest track here, a 17-minute song that offers a lot of passages, crazy moments in a rollercoaster of sounds. The spacey and psych sound is here all the time, the not so good issue is that after several minutes of the same it becomes boring, and in moments it even sounds jammed. After some eight minutes it seems to slow down, but it is just a false alarm, what slows down for some seconds is the guitar, but meanwhile the drums keep beating heavy and fast, and after a short break, guitars reappear and play countless notes. In the last minutes we can listen to a calmer track, however the vertigo never disappears, at least not in this song.

"Emmigrant Song" starts soft with a female voice as background, and then guitars, drums and bass appear in order to create a cool rock song with the mandatory psych element. I don't know if this is a kind of tribute to Led Zeppelin (judging by the title) but I feel they do have some influences by that band, in spite they did not create psych music. The music does not change, the structure does not surprise us, so here may happen what I experienced with the previous track: after some minutes, it can be boring. Though I must say I liked this much more than "Hell from Jazz".

"Easy Drugs & Hard Women" is a bit shorter, and it does have some changes (which is healthy to the sound, otherwise it would happen the same thing that happens with the songs above) that puts some dynamism. Though the musical concept does not have exotic combinations of sounds and rhythm changes, we can appreciate here that different synth sounds and other elements are being added while the seconds pass, so it is not that monotone.

The album finishes with "Noi Noi" which is my favorite track of the album. Though the structure here is repetitive, it did not bore me at all, on the other hand, it created that addiction that Seven That Spells are us to create, they know how to persuade the listener and how to make it feel hypnotized and in the end satisfied. What a pity this formula did not work for me in the whole album, but it did in this particular track.

Well, this is not my preferred STS album at all, it has some inconsistencies and it failed to get my true attention in some moments, that is why I will rate it with 3 stars, though I must admit I thought about a lower grade.

Enjoy it!

A wonderful trip to the psych and kraut realms!

The title says it all: "The Death and Resurrection of Krautrock" is what this Croatian trio offers in this five-song album, which was released last year (2011) and which I fortunately downloaded when the band offered it as a free digital album in the Christmas season. This was my first experience with a full-length album from this band, and so far my clear favorite. The album has a total time of 60 minutes, where three tracks have an average length of 6-9 minutes, while the other two are longer journeys of almost 20 minutes each.

One of the crucial things for any album, is the choice of the opener track, in my opinion it is really important because it opens the gates to their music, so the listener can decide whether to keep listening or change the CD. Man, what "In" offers is a terrific repetitive, hypnotic, addictive trip to the psychedelic prog realm. The rhythm is the same during the whole track, the guitar never ceases to play the same notes, though one may think it is boring, it is not, because the beauty of this is different elements that are being added by synths while the seconds pass. I have adopted this as my totally favorite Seven That Spells song.

The first epic track is "Aum", whose 19 minutes are a feast of that mixure of psychedelic rock with krautrock (we know kraut has inherent psych tunes, but we know the difference) and even some other styles. The guitar work is fabulous during the whole track, making powerful long riffs (not in the metal sense) and implementing different colors and emotions. They would not success if there is not a competent drummer, and here they have a superb one! When the song reaches the seventh minute there is a change, it slows down a bit but seconds later it explodes once again, but now with some screaming voices that turn the song even more interesting. The vocals continue for some minutes, but then disappear and the hypnotic music keeps creating that psych and spacey trip.

"Zero" is the other long track, so we had two songs in a row with long duration (both could make easily one album, or at least an EP). There is a significant difference from the previous tracks, seems that here we have a moment of stagnation because the song does not take off, I mean, the first minutes are slower, repetitive but never hypnotizing, on the other hand there are moments where I actually felt disinterested. I had a problem in this track, because I was expecting it to change, but no, it maintained the same direction and goal (just like the previous tracks) but here I did not quite enjoy it, which makes it of course in my opinion, the only weak passage of the album, though pure kraut lovers would maybe love it.

With "Rock Ist Krieg" the faster, rockier and heavier sound returns but this time with a crazier style. The song starts with a man screaming the title, and then a great offer of drums and strings begin to build up an orgasmic structure, which reaches its climax after two minutes with a powerful and energetic guitar riff. Later bass and drums create an addictive background, while guitars make their job. I really love the energy here, it makes you feel alive and crazy. A fabulous track that made me wake up after the previous boredom.

The album finishes with "Out" which is another extraordinary song. The structure is repeated over and over, just like in the opener track, the first minute is introductory with a sound that does not change, but later a voice enters and can be truly appreciated. Here the same feeling than the first track, an addictive repetition that makes me feel trapped into their musical realm, to the point that I don't really want to escape, nor the album to finish. But well, after six minutes, it finishes.

I am fascinated with this album, though my problem with it, as I previously exposed, is the third track, if it was not included, I am almost sure that my rating would have been five solid stars, but now I will limit to four, since that track takes almost 20 minutes of the album. But well, the other four are what make it so great. Congrats to Seven That Spells for such a great release, and for the terrific music they create.

Enjoy it!

"Modern, aggressive psychedelic wall of sound incorporating polymetrics and occasional Viking funeral rites; hailing from the 23rd century where rock is dead, Seven That Spells returned in time where its still possible to change the tragic course of the boring history."

Here's my introduction to the band Seven That Spells. These are the first and the last and the only words on the album.

Satan.. satan... satan... satan...

I don't know what these guys want from the poor guy named Satan but he's obviously not interested. This joke won't get the reader warmed up, but I'm okay as long as you continue reading. At this point someone stopped reading. Therefore I'm not so OK anymore. Let's proceed.

I've read and heard little about this band. I downloaded this one on christmas, they set the albums on the bandcamp account for free for one day or so. Wish I downloaded more albums! They're a space rock band, similar to a newer band I've listened to a year ago called Earthless, but for me, Seven That Spells are much better. They're not that brainless, to say it in the most wierd way that I could possibly choose.

The first track called "In" made a great impact on me. The repetitive cool guitar riff and the drumming. They are totally rocking out. The first thing you should know about this band is, they generally don't have strict song structures. It's generally one main guitar riff or rhythm, and on top of that, everyone's jamming like crazy. And these are truely talented people. The most obvious one is Niko Potočnjak, the guitarist. He rules his guitar to make psychedelic noises all over the place. Amp noises, guitar noises, everything counts. You can hear the Jimi Hendrix inside him noising around. There's not a single soft soloing on the album. Every solo on this album yells "Look at me I'm trippin!". The bass lines are so hypnotic. The drums never fail on bringing the energy. These musicians are top notch. They really can deliver some crazy jamming.

The second song, called "Aum" starts on a power chord hit on an interesting rhythm. For my own musical taste, I wish there were some more chord changes, as they're the "keys" to get the song on a more interesting form. I think this is an intended choice to gain more psychedelia than a structured song. The song gets on a different mood at the minute of 16. Cool jamming.

The third song, called "Zero" is mostly a chaotic guitar and amp noise, and nothing much. Nothing ever changes. If you guess this would end after a few minutes, you're terribly wrong. This will continue for 19 minutes. On this moment you should guess that this is no music for sitting with the glasses on (intelectual mode on) and caring about every little detail and change on the music. You can't do that here, because it simply doesn't change. It's just noise. I don't know if this gets you on a trippin mood easily, as I wasn't. I'm sure almost anyone would prefer any other song on the album to this one. Normally, I'm not the type that likes something like this, but now, I still don't like it. Haha, cruel.

"ROOOOCCKK IIISSSTTT KRIIIIEEEEGGG" is the name of the next song and the yelling at the very start of the song. It's much more structured than most of the stuff you hear on the album, and that bass line and the drums and the screaming guitar and the... This is a real trip. With "Aum" and "Rock Ist Krieg" these guys easily show that they are great at creating epics. Just listen to this one, this is a killer.

The last song is a reggea song, with soft feelings from start to the end. I'm just joking, this is another rocking out. It's called "Out". It's very similar to the first song, so it works easily on closing up the album. Satan... satan... satan... he's still not interested though. "Go away please!" he yells in my mind.

I had no intentions to give this band another chance till today, as I was pretty much convinced that they're just talented guys tripping out with noisy instruments and cool production. It's not a surprise that they are actually that itself. But they have this energy, cool riffing and total capability on their instruments. Those make this band worth-a-listen. This album is an exciting starter of a concept trilogy. Now I don't want to wait till the next christmas to hear more of this band...

The band has reformed again with new personnel around Niko's powerful guitar and psychedelic vision for this latest record of Seven That Spells. The A(lb)um is composed within a satanic circle, this sinful sphere being present both in sonic architecture of the release and on the record cover's symbolism.

In the start of this sphere dwells an anticipating rhythm, wall of noise and demonic chanting, which leads the music to euphoric ride to cosmic rock patterns and repetitive ascending guitar themes. There are very pleasant hypnotic qualities in the rhythm, and later the logics in the song are torn down, wiped to random events of powerful chaos. The title tune "Aum" rises from the debris, containing some menacing rhythmic patterns reminding Rush in its opening, soon giving room to screaming guitar wails screamed upon a powerful bass riff. The instruments conjure forth very atavistic and formless musical moments; Solemn ritualistic passage appears, containing sacred primitive chaos present in the early shamanistic krautrock records. I liked this longer adventure quite much, as it contained both long hypnotic elements, and also really great chaos guitar solo. The minimal passages where math and soothing space rock sounds united, created fine kicks and powerful cosmic visions. The levels escalate with logical steps as the trio's musical layers get more aggressively entwined, drilling to the deeper cores of Aum's vigorous vortex.

In the middle of the record resides a real null chamber, "Zero", a gigantic shapeless ambient form without any detectable features. There is a feeling of distance to this sonic source, and it is much more beautiful than some of the earkilling tracks from earlier records. Large musical mass waves beautifully like a cosmic horizon, giving delicate associations Pat Metheny's "Zero Tolerance for Silence". This void, an eye of a storm on the album, ends to stagnant long note, followed by "Rock Ist Krieg", a more aggressive rhythm killer. Groovy themes color this bass dominant tune, which reminds slightly the sounds of John Paul Jones' first DGM solo album. After few minutes changes take turn and the characteristic chaos gear is switched in, aimed for cruising to the ethereal tunnelvision of nocturnal highways, eventually leading to rhythmless noise-electronics of a dying car radio. Fine tides are rolling in the dynamics of this song, containing much happenings and interactive dialogue between players, and these vivid details contrasted with determined minimal motives make this quite interesting assault for my ears. Finally, similarly both positive and mystic theme leads to the exit of this album. Chanting increases the mythic and more sinister potential of the coda, and the meeting of the song's stagnant musical elements create fine hypnosis as finale.

On this record there are in my opinion more musical elements than on the earlier record of this year, and they are studied without haste, and also with more focused sense of style present. The structure of the album is fine, as the first six-minute track warms up quite pleasantly for the upcoming epics. These giants also differ from each other pleasantly, and the two shorter 8-9 minutes flashbacks following them create quite logical aural trip. So, the elements from earlier Seven That Spells recordings continue merging and evolving on the unholy altar of this fine psyched-out band, and I would certainly recommend this album for fans of aggressive psychedelic music.

This album leaps deeper to the stoned abyss of mathematical rhythms and acid guitar driven power, and also gives strong associations of the Acid Mothers Temple recordings. The graphic and song titles referring to psychedelic, progressive and classic rock songs are treated with very hardcore musical solutions. "Let's Go to San Francisco" announced by Ms. Dokuzović dives directly to formless planes of chaotic fuzzed guitar solos. The monotonic body of this opener is circled by groovy violent themes. The longer tracks open after this warm- up, "Hell from Jazz" builds from radiophonic noises, heavy guitar killing and primitive beating. The epic featureless space of sounds floats in the spheres for abstract seventeen minutes. Next ten minutes lasting "Emmigrant Song" starts with distant chant and call of guitar, and the composition focuses to a guitar riff sounding slightly the associated Zeppelin song's intro theme. The minimalist track has interesting developments in the end, as the pace decreases down really slowly. Math rock oriented runs introduce the first quite clear appearing song on the record, titled "Easy Drugs & Hard Women". Calmer feelings emerge from bass guitar running upon the scenery, guitar calmly counting the notes and cosmic sounds bubbling pleasantly behind. Power grows calmly, guitar solos grows with strength and reaches finally celestial heights, making this my favorite track on this confusing album. The record closes to "Noi Noi", which is a large wave rolling as one repetitive note, and there is nearly no evolvement in this fantastically autistic song. I would consider this album really heavy and intensive in its monotonic qualities, and recommend it to hardcore psychonauts only.

The album covers of this record give a quite prophetical first impression, and I think it stands as greates achievements from the group's five years span of musical development, excluding the masterpiece "The Men From Dystopia" recorded with Mr. Kawabata Makoto.

In the beginning, monumental "Olympos" is drawn to the horizon via anticipating aural tension creation, building interesting rhythmic hooks and spiraling in jazzy levels. A crash of gong summons a stagnant rhythm to the stage, accompanied with a fine melody from the saxophone. More striking math rock oriented background for lyrical side appears after a short and sudden sonic missile. Drums are given space for an effect treated solo, before the song returns to the starting theme. Song "G" is built from simple repetitive notes interacting and forming layer of rhythms, and t this basis is united sounds delivering feelings of dangerous urban jungle. Minimal and menacing song for solo instruments and hypnotic rhythms is relieved neatly to more free causeways, cruising happily in highway of sounds. Fine decreasing of intensity is achieved in the end, and convincing union of happy and violent elements merges as solemn surreal entity. "Terminus Est" starts with gamelan sounding web of licks, feeling like more powerful and violent version of King Crimson's discipline. The changes in tonal motives create furious sensations of danger and awesomeness, contrasted with "The Abandoned World Of Automata". This long song has laid back calm presence, where a really fine bass melody is conjured upon repeating hypnotic webs. Saxophone creeps in later really euphorically, spacey guitar crowning the tension. The musical freedom increases in the later parts of the tune, which finally returns to the chords were it was borne. Before ending, the main theme smashes in with powered strength, before accepting the jazzy calmness to close the track. This epic is certainly one of my own personal favorites on this record! "Death Star Narcolepsy" returns to more twisting planes, John Zorn reminding chaos noise aggressions appear as fast furious smashes. This terror gets contrast from sudden quietness and sharp rhythm counting for a more exotic klezmer sounding solo. The last twists lead to "Quetzalcoatl", which summarizes to heavy and nasty beatings with quick cross picking euphoria, leading to cool cruising on highway of jazzy saxophone sabotage.

I would warmly recommend this record for fans of heavy avant-gardist jazzy psych rock. I was personally interested to learn to know some fascinating underground music from Zagreb, as I got privilege to visit this beautiful Croatian city in the releasing year of this album. Sadly I missed their gig announced to be there quite close during time of writing, as seeing this group on stage would be very tempting opportunity. By listening the earlier records it has been interesting to witness band evolve from a progressive stoner psych rock as a more sophisticated noise jazz-rock ensemble. I have not heard the most recent records yet though, so I'm unaware the traits their artistic innovation has hurled them to.

This naughty album has really interesting line up, as there are three drummers abroad, and again Mr. Makoto on guitar.

"Cosmoerotic Giveaway" pioneers the record with aggressive approach, synthesizing noise rock elements with cosmic space rock phases. "Stara Planina (slight return)" treats then cosmic mantras with tender manner, and sounds quite much Acid Mothers Temple. Wildly twisting guitars entangle to each other in both chaotic and pleasant manner. Really delicate and solemn quiet moments follow, which evidently fall back to maelstrom of confusion. "Return of The Captain Beefstake's Love Apparatus" redeems the promise of its name, being a hazy chaotic piece with ecstatic theme for guitar and voices. Hypnotically waving sea has fast sabre dance flashbacks, but otherwise the determined ride to heart of storm is completed without disasters.

Two parted song coupling starts with "Cookies & Milk", where the characteristic musical elements are mixed to more distant sounding quick power tunes smashing in. Subtle arrangement gives form to a brutal space rocker, wailing furiously with echoed hollow calls and violent sax solo. I believe "Breakfast with Azrael" starts from a short moment of calmness, soon returning then to a chaos ride of ethereal rhythm sounds and singing, creating long lasting wonderful scenario.

The final track "Torture Vessel from The Triangle World" is then a solemn cosmic ambient sequence, shimmering with universal peace. Saxophone and atonal sound effects start to claim their presence, and the whole band rises slowly to front, yet not relying to any melodic nor rhythmic patterns, creating over thirteen minutes long wave of sound. This fine noise abstract innovation was maybe the best track here for me on the album along with its predecessor.

Eventually I enjoyed this album more than "Black Om Rising", but the overall feeling appeared bit distressing, though the chaos noising had great counterbalancing elements supporting them. I also liked many of the violent parts, but certainly this record needs a proper mood for listening, which I possibly did not have when studying this album.