Cloaks and Daggers

With riffs reminiscent of Fu Manchu, Kyuss and Unida the album starts off with an opening riff that bounces at you like the Sorcerer from the Holy Grail throwing fireballs.  Matt’s vocals urge you to abandon all thought processes and light up your brain with glee forthwith.

The middle section mellows somewhat from the driving force, nice contrast.  With echoey guitars and reverby vocals the band sound as if they are on the wing of Darth Vader’s X wing.  End is fast with repetitive beats getting you headbanging for sure.

Labyrinth

Classy chromatic riff to start reminds me of Clutch then after a while the mood changes to heavy jazz with a lilting motif that pogoes around your mind setting off pathways better than LSD.  All this accompanied by solid drums and bass courtesy of Tom and Ed, vocals gritty and grisly.

Solo section has wah wah tremelo picking either by Lucas or Mike, sounds like David Bowie playing with his silver balls in the film.  Vocals come back in to finish, ruff stuff.

Furthur

Clean sounds to start off and an acoustic, has the band turned into Genesis.  Divine drumming on toms and builds up with heraldic harmonies into the Devil’s music once more.  Frenetic drumming all over the kit, rhythms akimbo.

The rest of the band provide a tricky disjointed feel to pound at your head.  No good if you been on skull attack the night before.

Procession of Lost Souls

This is a cross between the Monks of Tibet or possibly Caldey Island and Bert Jansch.  Looks like they lost their words too.

At the Edge of Utopia

Frenetic from the off, sounds like the band had too much raw coffee like Kryten in Red Dwarf and a simple two chord riff does the business Cosmic dead stylee.

Changes of pace in the middle and here comes the reverb and echoes again, sounds like we are under the sea with Marina out of Stingray.  Ooo, look out, the sharks are back to finish this epic track with bombastic drums, fiery vocals, klingon battle cry guitars and bass.

Inside the Circle

Another stomping track with Matt raging about something or other with pounding super rhythms.  If you want an asbo put this on.  It gets quite doomy in the middle, yet still pacy.  It is great that this band like to mix up the rhythms, dynamics and tempos, mmm.

Feral

Congas Ahoy.  This sounds like a sea shanty complete with pirates and scurvy, bonkers track.

So Mote it Be

The beginning is a bit of a rip off of some Black Sabbath song but that don’t matter.  It then transcends into a jumpy riff that has tidy dynamics with drums on their own interspersed with the riff to delight the listener with the groovy sound of the bell on the ride cymbal.  Riff feels like trudging through mud when you are lost in the woods, great.

Overall Lacertilia have come up with another headbanging album designed to get you stomping through the rings of Saturn at warp factor 7.  With some funky interludes for when you end up on planet Zog and want to impress the natives with your intellectuality.