ninehertz

How many albums are we into Dead Sea Apes’ lineage now? It’s difficult to truly tell with all the splits and so forth, but what is certainly clear is that they’re only getting stronger. Psychic Tension is everything that has made them great – made them stand out – and more, combining the tripped-out elixirs of deep psychedelic adventures with the riff and ready sonically abrasive garage rock and Japanese psych sounds.

The opening Dam Your Eyes perfectly encapsulates all of their skill – slow and steady to the point you may even think uneventful… but you’d be wrong; as it then increases through its rotations in a way you don’t distinctly feel or perhaps hear the layering that is underway. The first you’ll realise is when your mind has wandered not away, instead within. One final subtle upsurge jolts you by its end, bringing you out of your haze if only to enable you to recognise you’ve been caught at all.

Severance has an agitation that counters the usual calming nature of psychedelia, a facet to the Apes that is always never far away. It gathers those ill winds into a central, instrument-collated hard-hitting riff that dominates its middle to end. There’s a settling aura through the title track that is gorgeous, before a slight change which reminds me on one high strata of atmospheric level of …And the Circus Leaves Town, a stoner rock reference that might be anathema to pure psych minded souls. It is fleeting anyway, for the main this is psych with an absolutely mesmerising driving force behind it.

How they create a varied experience across all of the tracks is fascinating, and a thrill to discover and delve. This is what they do, this is pure Dead Sea Apes, at their best.