The Warlocks

Same old story?
Band builds out of indie labels, becomes a cult sensation and moves onto to bigger things. Too many cooks in the kitchen and the band looses their sense of themselves and their label, regroups back on a cool indie label and returns to form?

With the Warlocks you learn to expect the unexpected. Always shrouded in mystery and dressed in black, this once octet known for their signature sound and live shows compared a million times to the velvet underground's exploding plastic inevitable have done always done the unexpected -- which is what they promised to do since their critically acclaimed "Phoenix" EP and albums "Rising from the Ashes" and "Destroying and Rebuilding".

Almost at the brink of giving up music completely, Leader Bobby Hecksher found the perfect label to let his art come before song and song come before art. Tee Pee Records (Brian Jonestown Massacre, Witch, Earthless, Entrance) a label known for giving their artists complete creative control signed the Warlocks with no idea of who was in the current line-up, no demos of new songs, no deadlines or marketing meetings, and no throwing around the phrase "radio friendly." Tee Pee trusted that whatever was forming in leader Bobby’s head would blow minds and twist ears after a train-wreck trip that almost saw the band's demise. The new trimmed-down line-up once known for taking long meticulous recording sessions into hell has banged out this new one within weeks.

Manning the controls was the band's old friend Rod Cervera who recorded the band's first EP, Rise and Fall (Bomp! Records), Rod's credits include Weezer, Lavender Diamond, Young People and Silversun pickups.

The mystery remains and this recording cannot be easily described. You must listen for yourselves. Rather than a radio friendly sound -- we believe it to be a tad more headphone friendly. In fact, opening track "The Valley of Death:" may be one of the most radio unfriendly album openers to ever be put out to the world ... this followed by the 11 plus minute "Moving Mountains". Track 3 "So Paranoid" again calls to mind some beautiful moments from Pink Floyd dark side era and maybe even Radiohead... we really can't say where this fucked up new even blacker warlocks is coming from. The record moves on to the almost trance like "Slip Beneath" into the more twisted and pulled "Zombie Like Lovers" a track that almost sounds like it could have come off the bands last release "Surgery" except inverted, disjointed, cut up and pasted back together ... much like the band themselves. Running through the rest of the tracks like "Dreamless Days" and "Death I hear you walking" the Warlocks' morbid combination of sound and sense should not be lost on anyone.