The Mouths Of Madness

Way back in the day, wise men (well, at least in their own minds) once said that if you went to San Fransisco, you should’ve made certain that you had some flowers in your hair. If these bell-bottomed groovynators had ran into the kind of longhairs found in the ranks of San Fran’s Orchid, those flowers would’ve probably ended being stomped into the dust of the earth. 6 years after their formation, a bunch of EPs and their debut album Capricorn back in 2011, here comes their "bigger label" introduction. The sound of this group certainly harkens back to those hippie-filled days put I’m not convinced they are any more about peace than they are about love. Their crunch up the volume, bring the kinda rocking that reminds me of Mountain combined with the more riff-laden album track moments of Zeppelin, along with the oldie doom vibes made famous by Sabbath. They play around with tempos nicely without getting nominally proggy or anything. The rhythm section is real tight with a tasty, tasty groove providing the spine for the riffage. Singer Theo Mindell deserves a separate mention. His raspy voice hovers somewhere between Ozzy and more “traditional” hard rock-howlers and provides some extra oomph and personality in the same package. The whole album is an evenly churning steamroller of smoking guitars that may not present too many mind-blasting hits but there is uniformity of pleasing quality. A few tracks do stand out. Mountains Of Steel is spiced up really deliciously with some piano while See You On the Other Side does actually bring some of those prog-vibes that I earlier claimed weren’t here. The latter track makes a case for glowing interest in Orchid’s future and their potential to expand this sound. The mellow middle section with some more varied percussion work breaks the mold which works in itself and leaves me intrigued.