Artist: Fu Manchu
Label: Century Media
Release: 2009
Length: 34:27
Rating: 4/5
Fu Manchu, the rooted, flinty southern desert stoner rockers from sweltering California, now on their 11th studio album, know no retreat from the ring of relentless droning, rumbling, stoned rattling in their sharp, disillusioned rage.
The boys keep on grinding with undiminished fury. They drive their trademark roaring, out-of-tune rock n’ roll, garage-grimy and scorching in its lively nuances, which gets even the most numbed-out music consumer moving. In its 22 years of existence the band hasn’t put out a bad album, and as “Sign Of Infinite Power” proves, they apparently don’t know how to put out a bad album at all.
Pentatonic riffs, run “in little squares”, irreversibly in love with semitone curves, offer fairly dull lathe work in technical terms. But in the essence of the band and the production itself they bring down the walls in front of them, as they relentlessly slice through concrete with their stone blade. That wall built on riffs is really the band’s main engine and weapon of expression. Then there’s the unmistakable, debauched singing, in the true spirit of defiance, from the irreplaceable Scott Hill, who as guitarist and songwriter is responsible for most of the new material this time too.
Fu Manchu manage to carve the unsaid into the already said. And that’s a sign of the inspiration and freshness that keeps clinging to the band, even on their 11th studio outing. The songs, with their recognizable stoner character, also hold onto the occasional sludge perversion, like the one woven into the chorus of Webfoot Witch Hat, the album’s longest track (four and a half minutes), with a rolling riff and a great middle section where a demolishing “wah-wah’d” solo grabs your attention with just the right dose of destructive fury. With the title track, the riff gets most brazenly close to their great role models Black Sabbath, to whom they owe the most thanks for the inspiration that keeps them among the living and drives them forward. Where there’s Sabbath, there’s Kyuss too, but that’s a story already distilled. Again, the bouncier rock n’ roller Eyes X 10 manages to prick up the ears of fans of, say, Queens Of The Stone Age in their Oliveri days. Within a relatively strict and narrow expressive range, the songs manage to create enough room to maneuver on the album to make for a dynamic record that never tires or bores the listener. Quite the opposite. It gives you a great excuse to crank the volume knob past its limits and surrender to the realm of rogue-ish Fu Manchu stoner goodness!
Fu Manchu keep up a healthy delivery with which, through their convincing releases, they’ve pulled a solid base of fans under their banner over the years, and whom they won’t leave in the lurch this time either with their new offering “Sign Of Infinite Power”. The pact with the devil in their pocket hasn’t expired with the new album either, and Fu Manchu prove they’re a band that knows what faith in your own musical ideal means! First-rate stoner during which you’ll easily feel the scorching California sun burn you in a wide swath along the neck! A gorgeous continuation of the story from the album “We Must Obey” (2007), then.
Line-up
Scott Hill – vocals, guitar
Bob Balch – guitar
Brad Davis – bass guitar
Scott Reeder – drums
Production
Fu Manchu & Sergio Chavez
Track list
1. Bionic Astronautics (3:44)
2. Steel.Beast.Defeated (3:48)
3. Against the Ground (3:20)
4. Webfoot Witch Hat (4:32)
5. El Busta (3:18)
6. Signs of Infinite Power (4:11)
7. Eyes x 10 (2:22)
10. Gargantuan March (3:41)
11. Take It Away (3:20)
12. One Step Too Far (2:13)
