Valley Of The Sun – The Chariot

 

 

Valley Of The Sun – The Chariot
Ripple Music / Fuzzorama Records – 2022
Rock, Stoner, Grunge, Hardrock, Blues
Rated: *****

We’ve been listening to The Chariot for a few months now and shall continue to do so. (Why do I keep referring to myself as ‘We’? I’m certainly not royalty! I should try and remedy that… Anyway…) We shall continue to keep listening to The Chariot for years to come, definitely and for sure. Cause Older Gods and Volume Rock still spin here regularly as well. We simply dig the sound, the tones and the atmospheres that the Valley Of The Sun quartet creates. It references everything we love about grunge and does so in a way that it never becomes too grungy. It does that same thing with hardrock and stoner; leaving everything in a fine balance on a tightrope somewhere, out there, in the shimmering distance, dangling fantastically high and indeed pretty low above a desert precipice. This time around the sound has become even warmer and steamier. If this is due to the new drummer or because the band, with solo surviving founding member Ryan Ferrier, at the helm, is simply that ever evolving entity, those heavy fiends that thirst to explore every avenue available, one can only guess. Opening with a bluesy, sixties guitar on Sweet Sands that instantly goes off into a riff and hook that keeps on circling, complemented by that awesome chorus and background vocals, it makes the opening track immediately that introduction you would love when you start a new album. It also promptly shows off what Mr. Ferrier is capable and most versed in, when it comes to vocal lines, and carrying a certain gritty energy to its logical conclusion. Freedom, escape, a yearning for wide open spaces and for travelling at the right kind of speed… The speed you want. That’s what you might take away from The Chariot and that is, for me, the ultimate example of what a band of desert pirates should wish to accomplish. And signing off your record with a strong composition like, Colosseum, the way the guitars seem to shimmer like a fata morgana across your stereo, that emotional charge in the vocals and the overall sound that creates this grandiose open plain, gives the album an extra bit of shine. The Chariot… It shines and gleams under the hot desert sun…

(Written by JK)

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