Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso

The Japanese super-group release their second blistering album in two months, this time using the Buddhist faith as inspiration. "Nam Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo” is a Buddhist chant that declares that all living beings have the potential to reach Buddhahood. This album explores this idea by recreating the chant in ten parts, the perfect exercise for a band whose albums often sound more like religious meditations than rock records. The album takes on a traditional sound at first, sounding like you’d expect, with guttural vocals and gongs before shifting into folkie guitar and whispering vocals. The track expands to include what can easily be described as the indecipherable screams of demons, which fall over the tinkering of tiny bells. Like most albums from Acid Mother’s Temple, it’s full of high-wattage guitar solos, UFO sounds and saxophones, but it does lack a bit of the raw edge usually found on their albums. Diehard fans, however, won’t be disappointed.