Paralyzed – Heavy Road
StoneFly Records – 2022
Rock, Seventies, Hard, Blues, Stoner
Rated: *****
We never got around to mentioning their 2019 debut album Hidden Sun or their self-titled 2021 second album. An incredible oversight on our part and we prostrate ourselves humbly before the band and beg their forgiveness. But it’s only been a year since that last damn fine album was released and the four German crazies from Paralyzed are already back with their third album Heavy Road! So, now we can make amends and glorify their take on seventies rock! Steeped in that classic blues sound the band obviously takes many a cue from the golden age of rock. It will take a lot of effort not to hear The Doors in most of the songs and even Jim Morrison’s timbre in a lot of the vocals. Which is never a bad thing! Opener Devil’s Bride opens the ball and gives you the atmosphere they are going for in full force. Coming out in full swing, in diesel blues groove and with this incredibly live feel to it. That live feel continues throughout the album and will give you a truckload of hints of what it will surely be like catching these cats live on a stage somewhere. Following Orange Carpet will undoubtedly become many listeners favorite track as well as Pilgrim Boots which followers later on. And since I personally have an Orange Carpet in my war room; this went on repeat for quite some time. Impossible to sit still while listening to this hard rocking blues stomper. It’s groovy, it’s colorful and it’s got some great keywork. Actually, we hear some wonderful keywork throughout the album which might just as easily put Jon Lord in your mind as well as Ray Manzarek, but it’s all done so marvelous, and yet almost veiled among the luscious guitarwork, that you might start to think they were unsure of the actual beauty of it all. And the way the vocals are almost declaimed during that highly atmospheric and riveting Coal Mine, shows that even though those raw gutter blues vocals are incredibly present on this album; they do switch in urgency, in cadence, tempo and rhythm whenever the track calls for it. Vibrating at the perfect energy level this retro, vintage, seventies, classic, heavy hard rocking blues outfit called Paralyzed keeps on delivering the goodness. The good and sweetness, the heaviness. This Heavy Road is something you will surely dig. You dig?
(Written by JK)
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