Considering the facts that we have all systems go and ready for launch, this will not be an ordinary day for a picnic when it comes to the maestros of neo-psychedelia and spaced-out rock voyages form Italian underworld Giöbia.
They have been around for 15 years now and continue to hurl listeners to go through the cosmos and take a page through the outer worlds between Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, Elephant9, and Motorpsycho into a delicious Italian smoothie with a mind-blowing flavor that goes along with it.
Their new album X-ÆON, released on the Heavy Psych Sounds label is as cosmic as cosmic can get. With its train-chugging arrangements, preparing itself to make the jump to lightspeed, Giöbia aren’t fluking around, they are getting down to business, making one journey to another with this massive spree waiting for us.
For the Basurto brothers (Stefano and Paolo), Melissa Crema, and Pietro Dambrioso, they run the gauntlet with high-speed volume and insane arrangements with its hypnotic approach to get your blood pumped up for more. ‘The Death of the Crows’ has this potential ‘60s garage rock with an acid house dive into this halogenic pool, waiting for you to take us on this heavy LSD trip!
But it’s the heavy ‘Voodoo Experience’ with a post-punk, krautrock wing-spreading voyage of hard riffs, insane synths coming out of the woodwork, and an Amon Duul II-like grandiose which speaks of the Wolf City album before going into the Kung Fu cinema’s of action-packed sequences that’ll make you want to dig out your Arrow Video collections of the Shawscope-era, setting the score to the 1978 Hong Kong martial arts film, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin featuring the late, great Gordon Liu, with an alternate soundtrack in full blast pm ‘Fractal Haze’.
‘1976’ is a laid-back psychedelic jazzier approach where the band take a break from their freak-out voyages into a ‘60s bluesy-fuzztone territory detailing the history in the timeline of that year with spoken dialogue, read through this alternate diary log. Now, we get to the four-part suite La Mort de la Terre. When you think of it, this is the band’s attempt to do an alternate soundtrack to the Giallo pictures of the 1960s into the 1970s when Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento were breaking barriers, pushing the envelope, and influencing other filmmakers to create their own film, but with a killer score
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This is Giöbia’s nod to maestros such as Goblin, Fabio Frizzi, and of course Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, and their 2024 album Nell’ Ora Blu. Yes, Uncle Acid did make an alternate score to an imaginative movie, paying homage to the Giallo film, so this Giobia’s tip of the hat to the Cambridge maestros.
The rhythm section has this upbeat tempo, yet darker approach, bass impended doom, and prog-like settings, that’ll make your skin crawl at times. It provides all of the wide-spread attack that the guitars and organ flow into the void, knowing that they have lost all contact on their home planet as it is being attacked by something terrible on dry land, and it isn’t going to be pretty.
But one of the pieces ‘L’Eau Fugitive’ takes on a meaningful, turned ominous nod to Le Orme’s Felona E Sorona with a cosmic attack thanks to Crema’s organ and synthesised arrangements, channeling the work of Tony Pagliuca and Claudio Siomentti. It’s almost as if Giöbia have become a trio with just bass, drums, and guitar. The power trio of all power trios when it comes to the progressive genre in another world, mind you.
And we’re not thinking about ELP, but important bands such as Le Orme, Latte E Miele, and the Warrior on the Edge of Time-era from Hawkwind thrown into the mix. Giöbia know their source material, top to bottom whilst the closing track ‘Dans la Niot Eternelle’ sees them walking into Goblin’s parallel universe, channelling the worlds of Suspiria and Tenebre with a dark, evil, sinister plot twist that makes it sound like it was recorded back in 1983.
It is quite the roller-coaster ride the band has unleashed. But be prepared to be tripped out and take the trip, and take the ride to a world that’ll have you spellbound as you enter the X-ÆON.
