KNUCKLE HEAD: Holsters And Rituals (STONER): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

For a few years, a tendency has been emerging, that of the duo. A guitar (or a bass), a drum and a song sometimes shared between the two acolytes. That's the main thing. What else is needed anyway to drain a good big Rock ? We already knew the Germans of The Picturebooks and, more discreet, the French of Electric Jaguar Baby. Knuckle Head completes this list.

The two guys are also french, but you can't really hear it. The form as well as the content refer more to the America of the great spaces, hot and stony, rather than to the Alsace, cold and wet. The bikers' look, dark but relaxed, and the bluesy and southern twilight Rock build the whole. They are two, Jack Escobar who scratches and roars, Jock Alva who hits his drums. Many people will certainly discover them with this "Holsters And Rituals" which however preceded two first attempts, "First Ride" (2016) then "II" three years later.

The faithful of the tandem and the lucky ones who could see the energy worthy of a living dynamo of which the latter is capable on stage, already know what to expect: the companions embark us for a wild ride through the American West. The journey is (too) short, less than forty minutes, but all the tracks sound like instant anthems, betraying a real goldsmith's work in terms of writing, arrangement and atmosphere.

While it might seem paradoxical if not unnatural considering the spontaneity claimed by the duo, this attention to detail never weakens the dark vitality of this stoner rock as hypnotic as it is moving. Knuckle Head describes its style as dark country. Rightly so, because the heavy, almost creeping features of 'The Right Way' are coupled with the sensual lines of the swaying 'Ritual', while 'Brand New Life' or 'The Sword' suck the black ink of a deranged southern rock with obscure hints of Blüe Öyster Cult. It's no coincidence that the former drummer of the American dinosaur, Albert Bouchard, is invited to sing on a tribal 'Existencial Anger'.

Even more than its elders that it dominates head and shoulders, "Holsters And Rituals" cultivates the nuances and presses on a rough darkness as illustrated each in their own way by a vicious, heavily tanned "Burn" and "Living Deep/Into The Night" whose almost seven minutes begin like a warm ballad before getting stuck in the sticky bayous of a redneck movie, during a second part curiously lined with hazy and gothic effluences.

Heavy and wild, energetic and sexy, "Holsters And Rituals" is the picture of a reptilian stoner rock planted in a twilight country, imposing Knuckle Head among the revelations of the year. - Official website

KNUCKLE HEAD

HOLSTERS AND RITUALS

AUTRE LABEL

STONER