Nephila – Nephila
The Sign Records
Release Date: 04/06/2021
Running Time: 35:45
Review by Wallace Magri
9.5/10
To keep going on my mission to get in touch with other Rock/Metal styles, just to have a break from my Industrial Metal compulsion, this time I selected a band by its musical style. I wanted some hazy smoke flowing around the room, some old-fashioned Psychedelic Stoner Rock, with a Hard Rock touch, just to keep things a little dazed and confused.
Once again, I was lucky enough to choose a cool album from the bag – the debut self-titled release from Nephila, a Swedish based neo hippie troupe consisting of seven masked musicians, with visual expressions to merge mysticism, folklore, and storytelling into a theatrical journey. They take us to the 60’s and 70’s counterculture movement, that philosophers call The May ‘68 ‘Revolutions’, to protest for peace, love, freedom of art expression and…irradiating good vibes and psychedelic experiences everywhere.
So, let us ‘escape’ to Nephila’s own side-world full of green valleys, mushrooms, waterfalls and beautiful sonorities, that relates to mother nature through female folk singing, to turn everything even more light and joyful. Looking at the band’s photos, they look like Middle Earth RPG game characters, steampunk & cosplay fashioned. Cool.
Another thing that caught my attention on Nephila is the dual vocal on the songs, and, good Lord, what beautiful work they perform on the album. It felt to me like one of the girls has a more soulful blues technique, while the other has that folk operatic reach (yeah, I don’t know who is who). The duet they sing on ‘Belladonna’ is just awesome.
‘Guidance to Agony’ has a mainly blues rock conduction, but suddenly the music gets into typical Prog Rock breaks and complexifications in the mixture, and even a bridge in the middle, when a hazy Moog organ taking us on Space Rock musical trips! Very pleasant, indeed. The heaviest song on the album is ‘Clavata’, that reminded me of the Occult Rock bands of the 70’s, that I used to call proto-metal bands, such as Lucifer’s Friend and all the amazing bands of the great Rock and Roll and Hard Rock 70’s era.
‘Mushrooms Creatures’ is total experimental Timothy Leary Prog Rock style; you can actually hear the elemental creatures through the guitar onomatopoeias and it is also the guitar solo that brings a Classic Rock pinch to the fine psychedelic Rock sounds. Hey, I wasn’t born to live during the 60’s and neither were Nephila’s band members, but I do know that some of the purple haze and mushrooms of that time are still around. These fungi grow everywhere, you just have to pick them and eat them, and then, well…just try them and you tell me how the story goes…😊
Highly recommended for those who are into listening to consciousness expansion music, with a lot of Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Iron Butterfly, Hawkwind and 70’s Prog Rock’s experimentations. Take it easy on the pink hazy smoke and dry mushrooms made of rainbows, and just let the music fly you away to outer space.
‘Belladonna’ (Official Video)
TRACKLISTING:
01. White Bones
02. Who Are You?
03. Mushroom Creatures
04. Belladonna
05. Guidance to Agony
06. Clavata
07. Alla Galaxer Centrum
LINE-UP:
Stina Olsson – Vocals
Josephine Asker – Vocals
Johan Lööf – Drums
David Press – Bass
Jacob Hellenrud – Guitar
Anton Athley – Guitar
Johan Larsson – Organ
LINKS:
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