Temple Fang – Lifted From The Wind

 

 

Temple Fang – Lifted From The Wind
Stickman Records – 2025
Rock, Psych, Free
Rated: *****

Temple Fang are here with five long masterworks built around psychedelic passages, spiritual journeys, and enlightenment. There’s a true sense of wonder and divinity as the emotional vocals put you in a state of heightened awareness across ‘Lifted From The Wind’. The four piece from Amsterdam utilize progressive structures and heavy psych across the long-form backdrop to create a mind-blowing album that resonates deep to the core. Like an ancient spirit speaking through the darkness, Temple Fang are the radiant light reminding you to close off the outside world and nourish the inner mind, body, and soul.

The first single, ‘The River’, is a great introduction to the band, their sound, and what to expect for the duration of ‘Lifted From The Wind’. With a running time of over eighteen minutes, it’s not even the longest track on the album! Just as the song, a river flows with no fixed path, there are twists and turns. There’s expansion, transformation, and growth. The three pieces of ‘The River’ flow flawlessly altering the riverside, eroding the ground from underneath. With the gentle beginnings of ‘Once’ we are presented with a different vocalist, in fact three-quarters of the band provide vocals on ‘Lifted From The Wind’ adding more diversity to an already talented roster of musicians. It’s a slow building track with shamanic spoken words, a sanctuary of thoughts that flicker like candlelight, afterwards escalading into cosmic swells and electric storms.

Exhale the tension, exhale the world, everything under the sun is golden. A bountiful yield of psych enriched melodies and bottom end vibrations await you on ‘Harvest Angel’. The polychromatic layers and changes of time implore you to turn face from the sun and follow the rainbow. Though ‘The Radiant’ is the shortest song on ‘Lifted From The Wind’ it is a mighty force to be reckoned with, shining its bold rays of harmonious vocalizations throughout while keeping the mood pleasantly buoyant. We are one with everything upon this earthly realm seeking the guidance and acceptance of the universe. ‘Josephine’ shifts from a beautiful, sunbathed day of warmhearted memories to a more dramatic turn in musical direction and events, with fear settling in after the loss of love to the ravages of time.

The struggles of the band from lineup changes to the dreaded plague have forged Temple Fang into a band with an iron will. Fortunately, their desire and strength to carry-on outweighed any of the detriments thrown their way and with ‘Lifted From The Wind’ have elevated themselves farther beyond possibly what even they could have imagined.

(Written by Jon McGough)

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Temple Fang - The Radiant

Temple Fang – The River