Sons Of Otis

The granddaddies of Toronto space/sludge/stoner rock return with a ten-inch picture disc, featuring a cover of the Hoyt Axton-penned Steppenwolf track "The Pusher." It's a relatively straight cover, with some of the most tame rhythm guitar tones Ken Bluke has ever committed to wax. His typical deeply buried, muffled, echoey growl praises "the love-grass" and condemns the Pusher's soul-stealin' wares. The drum sound may be disappointingly shallow and flat, but the guitar fills are as fat and creamy as you'd expect from Ken's Orange amp head. The flip side features the kind of mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, heavy-assed drone fans have come to expect from this band. And math rock it isn't. The pipe and pill-fuelled, half-time, Neanderthal groove of "Dark Sun" is punctuated with spacy effects washes that perfectly match the picture disc's image of a Dodge Super Bee spiralling into a nebula at 33 1/3 rpm. Is that the ultimate stoner rock image or what? As Neil Fallon might suggest, "Hit neutral in the tail of a comet. Let the vortex pull (your) weight."