There’s something crawling up my backside and has given me goosebumps here in the Lone Star state. That band is Temptress. Hailing from the Dallas / Fort Worth area, Temptress are a trio which considers Kelsey Wilson on lead guitar and vocals, Andi Cuba on drums and vocals, and Christian Wright on bass guitar and vocals.
They have been around for nearly five years adding not just the elements of metal, but goth, post-punk, doom, and alternative rock into a giant blender. And their debut album entitled See is one of those ingredients.
‘Into My Soul’ has this crunchy, revved-up attitude which sparks the vibe of Violent Femmes serving up beer to the dooming version of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti-era with Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland taking over the band for a short while during the recording sessions of the double album, adding his own take of ‘Dead and Bloated’.
‘Cry’ sees Wright going in for the droning march on his Bass as Andi turns into a soldier who’s bruised, battered, shell-shocked, and will never be the same person as she was by returning home. The themes become like a ticking time-bomb, waiting to explode before the temperature starts to increase as all hell has broken loose.
The tidal waving destruction throughout ‘Waiting’ is Temptress reaching for the jugular. When I hear Milo’s drum work with that pumped-up orientation, it made me think of CAN’s hyper-speed compositions, ‘Oh Yeah’ and ‘Halleluwah’ from the Tago Mago album.
For the first two minutes and fifty seconds, Andi channels the drum techniques of Jaki Liebezeit’s textures by going up and down the stairs in a rapid pace while the duet between her and Wilson shows how much they keep up with each other before it starts to slow down in an operatic form on their last days on earth.
‘Hopeless’ closes the album in a Rollins Band-like twist with its crunchy riffs that have a motorcycle sound, followed by psychedelic atmospheres that Kelsey brings out in her solo honouring not just Tony Iommi, but the late, great Manuel Göttsching whose vibration speaks the word of ‘Amboss’ from Ash Ra Tempel’s sole self-titled debut release in 1971.
Whether it moves you or not, Temptress takes you into the deep, dark tunnels and unveils this crystal ball, showing you these hidden secrets that’ll make your eyes wide-open. And we got to witness its true colours from start to finish.
