Off to… France and Italy…

It’s that time again… Three weeks off grid, connecting with nature and all the good stuff life has to offer… We’re off to the Ecrins Natural Park to hike around the mountains there and then off to the Piemonte region in Italy. Lots of hiking there as well… And since we’re close to Turin, we might visit that. Hence, we will be taking the Dune Aurora album with us for sure. Got any more tips we definitely need to bring on the road? 

Seeya in a few weeks!

Cesar Sun - The Palace
Self-released – 2026
Rock, Stoner, Punk
Rated: *****

Wow. Wow. WOW!!! There are debut albums that leave a lasting impression. There are also the ones that radiate with hellish joy and hit your skull with a concrete brick. And then there's 'The Palace' by Cesar Sun, a young band from Ghent, Belgium, that ties you to a pole just to run you over while driving a revved-up tank at 100 miles per hour. This is the real shit people. The kind that feeds you razorblades for breakfast and rips the fuzz from your guts.

The intro 'Easy Come' starts with subdued speech before the rope gets payed out, serving energy on a bed of tension before the chest gets pumped up and ripped open with the first real song 'Where Is The Wine?', a belter of gargantuous proportions that displays the utter desperation when one runs out of a certain type of liquid at an inappropriate time. And man, those vocals! It's hard to put into words how they sound, but they're phenomenal with the perfect balance between emotion and power.

Even though the whole album pays homage to the church of rock and its complacent aggression, there are also moments where the gas pedal gets some relief. A great example are the verses in 'Paradies' (the German word for paradise) that form a stark contrast to the chorus and makes the latter blast even harder than it already does. In the jumpy and diverse 'Backwards Overbender' the title appears out of nowhere in whispering form before things get back to the nitty gritty of kicking the shit out of you. And there we've got the key word to this splendid album: diversity. Because the sound of Cesar Sun is all over the place, borrowing from lots of styles while staying coherent all the way through.

Take - for example - the punk influences that spice up 'Piss In Peace' and 'The Line'. Or the way they appear to enter the night shop at some point asking (again) where the wine is before they settle for almost one minute of furious doom, leading to the conclusion the shop might be all sold out in that department. 'Tunacan' is more straight forward and has the line 'you need more money to need more money' ringing in your head for an elongated period of time. It all leads up to the final song 'Easy Go' that shows their most sensitive side during the first one and a half minute, after which elements of postrock are added until the last chord fades out into something that can be called a quiet emptiness, a place where your feelings (that have been so thoroughly tested) are echoing in the large halls of an empty palace, totally in sync with what you've heard the past 24 minutes.

(Written by Ronny Dijksterhuis)

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Go Mahhh – Doppelgänger
Noisolution – 2026
Rock, Kraut, Psych, Garage, Indie
Rated: ****

I adore this languid, sunny version of kraut and psych. And that’s what Doppelgänger is all about. As the needle drops on the record, the Go Mahhh four pull listeners into a haze of swirling fuzz, hypnotic grooves and evening sun psychedelics straight out of the Berlin underground. This is dream music. This is that slightly feverish, slightly sweaty and especially giddy feeling you might experience dancing with the girl of your dreams as the sun slowly sets… 

Shoegaze textures might be colliding with heavy stoner riffs on some moments, for the most part though we are dancing through all sorts of krautrock repetition. High Mountain opens the set, the evening, the trip with trance like intensity! While tracks like Anatoliosis and Happy Satan’s Reign drift between cosmic exploration and raw, earth-shaking power. Or is that because you are falling so madly in love that you feel the world whirl around you? 

They have walls of guitar, which seem to bend over you or embrace you all around, they are hairy, fuzzy walls and you want to cuddle them and fondle all the subtle details… Fluttering flute lines, shimmer synth work, tablas, vocals drenched in echo and kaleidoscopic mirroring. Those minor or more Eastern influences. It is unpredictable, the pulse of this record. The heartbeat that skips. Just like when you are falling in love. Take a chance, say yes, and keep saying yes.

It sounds like Go Mahhh continuously said yes to whatever came next when they were writing and recording Doppelgänger. Skirting around edges, never polishing the rawness, making the fever run hot and the party vibe even hotter. Songs are allowed to stretch, meander, wander, get of course and explode with fearless energy! And it’s that twitchy unpredictability that makes the album so compelling. And yes, it will make the sun set and the gaze into the eyes of who are you are dancing with seem to last forever…  

(Written by JK)

Out this Friday the 29th of May on Noisolution, but you can listen BSBBQ and Blood Transfusion on their bandcamp right now… 



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Babylon Tree - Habim 
Self-released – 2026
Instrumental, Rock, Psych, Desert, Eastern
Rated: ****

I remembered the Eastern Tales album from 2019. The progressive and psychedelic nature of the compositions weaving itself around all those worldly and Eastern influences had fairytale qualities. It made you see the caravans, the dust storms and the oasis. And now, after seven years, and many different members, the Athens based outfit Babylon Tree is back with a new release called Habim! 

Two instrumental beauties cover the Habim sides, both lasting around ten minutes and both again in the vein of Eastern tinged psychedelic rock. But warmer to the touch and more finely produced. Still retaining all of those storytelling properties. Somewhere between a desert mirage and a midnight trek along the moonlit city walls, Babylon Tree emerges, carrying dust covered riffs, hypnotic grooves and melodies that have that ancient and wise feel. Habim unfolds like a journey through the forgotten alleyways from some grand Middle Eastern city, and the burning dunes outside. Where fuzzy guitars can echo against the city walls or drift off towards the endless horizon. A track like Liquid Garden drifts and pulses with a mantra like energy, pulling the listener ever deeper into a world where the heavy side of desert rock whisps around all that psychedelic mysticism. 

The sound seems ingrained with a jam like quality, as if everything came naturally, shaping the sound organically and letting each composition breathe, evolve and reach its full potential. The Oriental melodies, enriched by female vocals that seem to drift like the wind itself, only get crushed by a riff once or twice, creating moments that feel entirely meditative, until that explosive instance. It is without any doubt inspired by seventies progressive rock and psychedelia, the raw pulse of desert rock and the love of a story… For if you take Habim with you, then Habim will take you into a dreamlike landscape where heaviness, atmosphere and storytelling flow completely naturally and become one… 

(Written by JK)

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FULL ALBUM PREMIERE 

Hypnosaur – Afterlife

There she blows! The FULL ALBUM PREMIERE for Hypnosaur's Afterlife! Together with the amazing Noise Magazine from Poland we are honored to bring you this wild new album. We wrote about it yesterday; but it has been repeat for a week and ever since... Cause... 

Hypnosaur kicks the video store doors off the hinges and floods the room with neon graveyard smoke, satanic disco glitter, and enough hooks to hijack your nervous system for weeks! As we already stated...  Afterlife sounds like a cursed VHS tape of some weird eighties horror flick, discovered behind a liquored-up video store owner sleeping in a dumpster at 3AM, then blasted through a wall of fuzzed-out blown-out amplifiers. Massive choruses, earworm metal, occult swagger, psychedelic detours, punked-up stoner riffs and synths dripping radioactive slime collide in glorious excess. Somewhere between Ghost, Blue Öyster Cult, Abba and a glam gang outrunning the apocalypse, Hypnosaur deliver pure midnight mayhem: ridiculous, hypnotic, strangely heartfelt, and dangerously addictive... Hypnosaur, Hypnosaur, Hypnosaur, can't you see... Those Afterlife songs, just hypnotize me... 

Read the full review HERE 

And press play now!  

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Sarniak Music 

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