High Noon Kahuna – This Place Is Haunted

 

 

High Noon Kahuna – This Place Is Haunted
Crucial Blast Records – 2024
Rock, Psych, Surf, Kraut, Noise, Grunge, Punk
Rated: *****

Tumbleweed Nightmare, with its freedom, wildness and that untamed feeling of exploration might be one of the coolest tracks on the new High Noon Kahuna album. It rumbles and rambles and rolls on like the legendary bush balls in the title. But there’s this ominous feeling, a nameless dread that follows along and could easily transform itself from a sleepy god of mercy into one of vengeance. It sounds limitless. Tumbleweed Nightmare is only wrangled in, by way of a start and finish to the song on this album. It’s fluidity and its jazziness could easily turn this one song into an hour long session on a stage somewhere. With me hopefully present. The story, the lyrics, still vague and open for anyone to interpret in their own way here, could be building towards a modern day exploration of something that could rival a book like Blood Meridian… It’s one of the many highlights on This Place Is Haunted, and since the words we jotted down about their earlier album Killing Spree turned out a bit too weird. We hoped to limit that craziness a tiny bit this time around. It would also fit the new album, for it can definitely be considered as less crazy and feral than their earlier Killing Spree record. Although, to immediately contradict that statement you only have to push play for the very first time and feel the radioactive noise immitted by opening track Atomic Sunset. That opening organ and heavy distortion is definitely intense and brash enough for the High Noon Kahuna three. A righteous crack in the sky. After which the sound becomes this wavey and tangible sound breeze, highly mesmerizing and incredibly easy to get lost in. The opening seems meant to jog you awake before you get to surf off into the dreaminess of your own brainwaves once again. Even the more explosive build up towards the ending organ tone; isn’t as invasive as that opening detonation. Atomic Sunset feels like one of those physical moments that shoot through your body as you almost fall asleep. It seems to serve that singular sensation of waking you up from whatever slumber you are in; so that they can properly set you up for the feverish dreams that will follow. For the fever is still there, present in some shape or form on all twelve tracks, on almost fifty-five minutes of heavy rock. Still incorporating sixties, surf, noise, grunge and punk into their psych and kraut, and marrying all that to even more genres, the High Noon Kahuna three seem ever more destined to make the one album that shall unite every genre ever conceived at one point in their career. This Place Is Haunted isn’t THAT album yet, but it is THE album that makes clearly audible how proficient these cats are and how easy it will be for them to produce that album at some point. Just hear that choppiness in Lamborghini, the elation during Prehistoric Love Letter, the noise and grime from Good Night God Bless, the doom in Midnight Moon and we could go on and one, everything seems completely fair game to these three. And rightfully so, cause this is their house, their place and even though everyone’s invited in, you need to be prepared for the ghosts your will find. This Place Is Haunted slices like a majestic beacon through the night; and once inside the lighthouse, you will find yourself, with sweat dripping down your spine, dancing with every shadow you see…

(Written by JK)

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