A killer limited-edition cassette of Om-meets-Hawkwind black-hole psychedelia from this Glasgow-based band. The Cosmic Dead just popped up over the past year or so with a couple of releases on the likes of Grindcore Karaoke and Who can you trust?, the latter making perfect sense with releases from likeminded heavy drugonauts like Witch, Gnod, La Otracina, Sylvester Anfang II, and Titan. In company like that you'd be correct in guessing that this is going to be some sort of heavy, modern psych rock blowout on the exploratory side, something that the Cosmic Dead get real lost in. Much like their buddies in Gnod, these guys wander way out into the outer realms of improvisational interstellar groove, drawing influence from space rock titans Hawkwind and classic 70's krautrock and cosmic music and adding an extra dose of ominous darkness to the proceedings.

This latest tape from the band comes via the Dub Ditch imprint and features four long tracks of slow-motion freak-out, with the a-side title track taking up the entire side, followed by three slightly shorter songs on the flip. The title track is pretty terrific, a thirty-four minute sprawl of trippy guitar explorations shooting across their night-sky ambience, gobs of wah-soaked wailing and gorgeous dark melodies spiraling high above gusts of fx-whoosh and spacey synth sounds, all sounding as if they are going to become untethered at any moment and float right out into the blackness of space, anchored only by the rock-solid rhythm section as they form into a monstrous droning groove at the heart of this expansive acid-jam. Turns into fuckin' beautiful stuff by the end of it, with some killer analogue synthesizer sounds, sinister caveman chanting, strange metallic percussion and delay-drenched harmonica all appearing as the band locks into a motorik black-hole choogle that they drive straight into the void. In the last few minutes of the track, they actually disappear into a monstrous drone jam that sounds almost Om-like. Very nice.

The b-side cranks up the heaviness a bit; first up is "Anatta", a lumbering hypno-dirge swirling with cosmic effects, the drummer and bassist locked into a slow pounding rhythm, heavy and mesmeric star-fog glazed with more of those ominous synth textures and some sweet Hammond organ tones; its not that far removed from the lysergic Hawkwindian psych-sludge of Bong and Queen Elephantine. There's a heavily drugged psych-drift freak-out called "Nagas Lrac" that is all echoing vocals, random interstellar synth noises and vast cavernous reverb, leading directly into the final lumbering space-dirge "Anaphora", the tape's heaviest song. The rhythm section kicks in to a monstrous Sabbathian groove on this song that circles eternally within the band's cloud-nebula of guitar howl and cavernous feedback, again evoking the specter of a dirtier, noisier version of Om, seriously hypnotic and nod-worthy music that marches inexorably into the album's final moments of shifting, shimmering ambience.

Released in a limited edition of one hundred copies.