Review Summary: The fuzz may drown you before you finish.
Unfortunately any comparable band to Kyuss is difficult to find to say the least. Their spacious atmospheres and heavenly addictive instrumental meshing throughout all their albums cannot be measured. There have been only a few bands that have grabbed my attention in the stoner rock scene, more recently, one of them being Truckfighters.
Truckfighters have a distinct difference between Kyuss. Although Kyuss would usher in what would be the staple for their genre, Truckfighters go towards an opposite direction. Their sound is comparable to Atomic Bitchwax, Firestone, or Dozer. Instead of spacious environments with melodic guitar they prefer huge amounts of fuzz with crowded instrumentals. Despite their lack of production throughout this band (something that has always marred stoner rock bands) their true qualities seep through this entire record. “Desert Cruiser” is only a taste of what’s to come. For one, their vocals aren’t in the mainline by any stretch of the mind as it’s almost entirely drowned out by the fuzz brought by the guitar. Even if most of the vocals are drowned out Oskar Cedermalm still adds another dimension to this sound. The guitar is by far the highlight as Niklas Källgren shows his skills, but despite this Oskar’s bass does make appearances throughout the album that is noteworthy since it holds some these songs intact.
What may be troublesome for some is obviously the lack of freedom in these songs. Although there are distinct areas in some songs that allow the listener to relax a few moments, for the most part Truckfighters keep the fuzz rolling. You may be overwhelmed with the amount of fuzz-happiness they exhibit, but don’t be frightened because under that thick veil of constant bombardment there are brief moments of mellow enlightenment by the band as shown in “Gargarismo”. The best question I can give you to decide if you would enjoy this band is this: Did you enjoy Kyuss’ instrumentals?
Despite most of the album being overbearing for the most part it doesn’t become a problem until the later tracks as we all get our fill of the fuzz by then.
’Gravity X’ has something for everyone that is looking for another stoner rock band to worship. If you’re looking for instrumentals with heaviness then you’d be interested in “Desert Cruiser”, “Momentum”, “Deal”, well to be honest most of the album holds this criteria. Where in lie the vocals is somewhat of a hit-n-miss affair; “Freewheelin’” is a failure because of the lack of continuity with Cedermalm and the rest of the band. To appreciate Cedermalm vocal talents you would look towards “Superfunk” and “Gweedo-Weedo”. Hell, you’ll even hear some saxophone to accompany his vocals in “Subfloor”. What is more promising for Truckfighters is this is only their debut, already exhibiting some strengths in these areas: Guitar work is on point (despite being overbearing), Cedermalm’s vocal contributions need to be worked on, but when he nails it, it more or less sounds like a Kyuss-esque rendition, and lastly the drummer is sufficient enough to keep the pace.
