Beardfish - Mammoth

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I guess you should check BEARDFISH out if you’re looking for something different from the ordinary. Now though I have to admit that I don’t know anything what so ever about Art-rock, Progg-Rock or whatever you can call this. For a confirmed Metal Head this sure was an experience. Of course it will sound good when you put a bunch of musicians together like this. Rickard Sjöblom is a wizard with his organ and he’s an extremely decent guitar player as well. Then, if you add a whole bunch of fantasy and ability to write music with hit potential without even being close to a standardized song-structure it can be really, really interesting. It will take a while to get into this album because there are a lot of things going on.

"And The Stone Said: If I Could Speak" is almost a concept album in itself. It is a 15 minutes long tune with a lot of different passages and variation in the music. "Tightrope" is a much more basic song, of course not at all ordinary. I wouldn’t say that BEARDFISH sounds like FREAK KITCHEN but there are similarities, especially when it comes to thinking outside the box. Also, sometimes the riffs and tone of the guitar has resemblances with Mattias IA Eklund with those kinds of disharmonic scales and odd rhythms. Also, Rickard’s voice is very much in the same register and of the same type as IA.

A huge part of "Mammoth" is very melodic, like the revival of 70’s pop-rock that got extremely popular through bands as ATOMIC SWING or STONE CAKE in the early 90’s. And taking in account that everything goes in circles, it must have been a similar era about 15-20 years prior to that. But again, since I don’t know anything about the genre I shouldn’t say anything but at least GENESIS or KING CRIMSON comes to mind. There’s also another part of it all, the much heavier where the music even touches early BLACK SABBATH’s heaviness and gloom. "Green Wave" is especially heavy even though I must admit I’m not too fond of the brass section that appears in the middle of the song. "Akakabotu" almost turns into pure Jazz, don’t let the neat and nice melodic intro fool you.

I guess, for a musician this will be striking from the start because no one can deny the skills of this band. They’re absolutely amazing musicians then of course it’s all a matter of taste but that they managed to catch my interest and not feeling overly pretentious sure is a plus. BEARDFISH’s "Mammoth" album is absolutely something for anyone to check out.