Black Bombaim - Titans (Double vinyl LP)

Nice! Often the review pile is slim pickings if you’ve got the Tuesday review shift because often a lot of the good stuff doesn’t arrive until later in the week, but I don’t have to worry about that today because I get to start with the ambitious new 2LP epic ‘Titans’ from Portuguese stoner, errrr, titans, Black Bombaim. As far as I can tell they’re going taking a Sleep-influenced drawn out approach to these four lengthy jams, each of which features collaborations with members of the likes of Comets on Fire, Mao Morta and Sunflare and even some sax from Stooges honker Steve Mackay (presumably these guests are the “Titans” the title refers to)! His contribution is pretty smooth and takes things right back to the ‘80s for a weird disconnected shuffle-groove bastard of a track.

What results are four shameless, galloping weed jams with great swathes of blown-out Heads-esque guitar tones, a pummelling tractor bass that’s nestled in somewhere between Bent Saether and Al Cisneros and simple, heavy, Bill Ward-ish drum grooves for a sound that comes across like a more ‘70s rock-influenced take on the modern dirty psychedelic sounds of bands like White Hills or Carlton Melton. Business Lady just rightly noted that it’s quite cheesy for a psych-rock record but to be honest I think many of the best psych rock records are cheesy so I don’t even see that as much of a criticism. Basically what’s happening here is a load of extended weed rock jams with hard grooves, overdriven guitars and heavy ‘70s riffs aplenty. Nothing groundbreaking, just hard stoner fun.