Even though their title stands for "Russian Association Of Independant Genres", R.A.I.G. has been mining some of the raddest, heaviest space rock action
from outside of the former Soviet Union, starting with the debut from U.S. Christmas that had just about every cosmic hesher that heard it praising 'em as
the best new psych rock outfit around, and now bringin' us to this hefty disc from an Australian power trio that I hadn't heard of before. It only took a
couple minutes of their music to glide across my ear canals before I decided that we had to get this album for the C-Blast store, and stat. I dug
around and it looks like Chixulub is Ahkmed's first album, even though the band has been around since 1998...leafing through the album booklet
(which is goddamn killer, but I'll get to that in a sec...), however, reveals that Chicxulub is actually a collection of two previously self-
released EP's, 2005's In Your Neck of the Dying Woods and 2003's Ahkmed.
At first, the songs on this disc sound like they are going to be super fuzzed out, epic instrumental rock a la Mono or Pelican or Mogwai, and I was even
reminded of their fellow Aussie sludge slingers Fire Witch: lotsa big fuzzy riffage, catchy hooks riding on big instrumental clean guitars that start off
mellow and wind up into explosive crescendos, trippy guitar fx swirling around brooding chords. But Ahkmed start to mix things up pretty quick, cranking up
the space rock FX really hard, the fuzzbomb guitars kicking out utterly wicked Sabbathian stoner riffs, and then everything suddenly surging forward
into a sick Krautrock style jam, acid guitar freaking out over propulsive amphetimine fueled drumming that cuts a swath across red desert wastelands, a burly
soulful drawl comin' out of nowhere and describing mystical vistas, then stumbling back into muted druggy psychedelia, soaring cosmic drones and lengthy
passages of spaced out ambience. The loud/soft, stomp-on-the-distortion dynamics are used to great effect on alot of these songs, but it's the massive
crushing Krautrock rhythms and super zonked, fx-splattered guitar that wanders all over the horizon of Chicxulub that makes my eyes roll back into
my head. Very crucial heavy psych - imagine Hawkwind, Finnish hypno-metallers Circle, the more recent Isis stuff, Acid Mothers Temple, Pink Floyd, Kyuss, and
Monster Magnet rolled into one big fat bong blast of psychedelic stoner post-rock. Man, the final track "Samar" just kicked in and it's horizontal motorik
drive and stomping acid metal grooves kill it.
And the package is freaking awesome. R.A.I.G. usually goes pretty creative with their stuff, but this is the coolest CD package that I've ever seen from the
label. A full color digifolder illustrated with strange images of floating rock hovering over an abstract landscape, which opens up to reveal a twelve page
booklet that is bound in to the internior of the jacket, and which features an array of surreal photographs of prehistoric looking cave warriors covered in
animal skulls, tattoos, animal hides, bones, and demonic ceremonial masks.
Highly recommended to fans of heavy psychedelia. This album rules.