(((O))) Review: Brown Acid: The Twenty-First Trip

There’s something growing more and more out of the garden of hashish where it came from. Like a stroke of lightning coming out of the sky, it’s hard to believe that the Brown Acid keeps on coming out for more obscure masterminds for the next acid trip that’s waiting for us. 20 volumes in the can, they continue to branch the tree out even bigger this time. And this one, is heavy one in the 21st volume.

I had always been a heavy music person since 1998. There were some of the biggies that made sense to me; Black Sabbath, Metallica, KISS (before I got tired of them a few years later as they became non-musical to me, only prefer their golden-era from the first album to Love Gun), Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, The Who, Electric Wizard, and Hawkwind. This was the heavy sound that made sense to me.

It had energy, fire, and power inside their hearts and minds when they play with an eruptive cannon blast. I had no idea what to expect when it comes to the first Nuggets box set when I bought it 20 years ago when I was still in Junior College, working on degree in Music in Performance. Plus listening to episodes of Little Steven’s Underground Garage during my time at Junior College at the same time.

Sometimes, Stevie would play music that was refreshing. From the realms of The Electric Prunes, Them featuring Van Morrison, The 13th Floor Elevators, The Creation, Easybeats, Count Five, and my favourites, The Pretty Things, The Move and the Small Faces. This was the shit back then, even though they were released in the mid-to-late 60s during their garage-era, it made absolute sense then all of that fucking junk MTV was showing.

It was that god-awful nu-metal and boy band which I’ve always said that was absolute fucking shit. From Limp Bizkit, Korn, O-Town, Godsmack, Backstreet Boys, and all that wasteful crap, it nearly made me want to change the fucking station and watch an episode of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Sailor Moon, Powerpuff Girls, Teen Titans, Justice League, Hi Hi Puffy Ami-Yumi, or sometimes Young Justice (which made a bit of sense).

And now, here I am, reviewing another volume which makes perfect sense for RidingEasy Records to unleash something delicious, something tasty, and something to make you want to come back for seconds. Listening to the Twenty-First trip, you get a sense that these bands were often under the radar and never got the recognition they truly deserve.

This is pure heavy, pure psychedelic, pure garage, and sometimes prog to the core, you can’t deny the sound that comes out of the floodgates, ready to give Disney the massive giant middle finger they truly deserve. From the rumbling turn revving sounds of Opus Est’s ‘Maggie Johnsons’, it becomes a nod to Hawkwind’s song ‘Motorhead’ which would a fiery jump to light-speed with its blaring solo, spaced out reverb effects, and mind-blowing vocals, it nearly made me jump out of my seat and head-bang this mo-fo.

Then, we jump to the next train for the pure psych-garage rock attack for Freedom North’s ‘Losing You’. Here, they put the pedal to the medal as this track has bass and guitar going into this melody effect before screaming out into the night, knowing that this maybe the last battle they go into and prepare to die for their fellow comrades and go out in a blaze of glory.

But what’s this, blaring organs coming out of the sky? Why yes, it is! Accents ‘Friendly Stranger’ gets down and dirty. There are the chugging guitars, Beatle-like nods to the White Album, bass following in hot pursuit to reach the finish line, you can’t go wrong with that. Brother Love’s ‘Rock N’ Roll Band’ sounds like a motif to the Rolling Stones ‘Satisfaction’ as they show their love of the British Invasion with its lyrical textures about life on the road, traffic becoming a nightmare, and reaching to the next gig.

‘Bike Writer’ by the River Styx is pure garage rock at its best. Listening to this New Jersey-based band who have added in those fuzz guitar sounds with some nasty grooves, and paying tribute to Count Five and the late, great Sky Saxon of The Seeds, makes you want to turn it up to a maximum to see what you’ve been missing.

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Loving that wah-wah introduction as it falls into massive amounts of mescaline in Hunter S. Thompson’s briefcase that comes out of the sky with its menacing approach on the Maxx’s ‘200 Years’. There is the corruption, the price, and the demise that’s about to occur, and it isn’t going to be pretty while Pump’s ‘Kinda Like’ goes into a cool groove as the lyrics…. you get the general idea on what it is about.

But you gotta love their approach to fellow obscure legends from Barbados named Luv Machine as they sing it in the style of ‘Witches Wand’ at times. But with an organ sounding at times like a mellotron, you can’t go wrong with that. 29.9’s approach to Hendrix’s ‘You Got Me Floatin’’ from the Axis: Bold as Love album, is their nod to the late great master.

Delving deep into the track, it is the garage sound that this Pittsburgh band really take it up a notch that was recorded back in late 1969 when they used their guitar to channel the virtuoso’s improvisations. South Dakota band Wakefield, brings in the massive prog-rock arrangements for the 5-minute piece ‘Here I Am’.

I don’t hear anything symphonic on this, but there are touches to Amon Duul II’s sound which speak of the Yeti-era, Zeppelin approaches by serving brunch with German maestro’s Eloy during the Inside-era, synths galore for a brief moment with organ work, and followed by Leaf Hound’s Growers of Mushroom into the blender and makes it a delicious smoothie that’ll make you trip out of your mind like a motherfucker! And yes, mellotrons galore!

Closing up the Brown Acid shop is a slowed-down wah-wah psychedelic blues with reverbing vocals for the Peacepipe to bring the 12-bar sounds of the ‘Lazy River Blues’ into the fold. As I close up this review, I begin to realise how much this music as I’ve mentioned earlier was often under the radar.

How did they never gotten the recognition they truly deserve? Maybe because they were ahead of their time. But we hope the Brown Acid series continues to do more in the years to come to inspire the next generation that has proven that metal is not just a five-letter word. And in the words of HUNTR/X from the successful film KPop Demon Hunters released this year, The Brown Acid series shows other compilations how its done, done, done!