Review Summary: This is your brain on drugs
Last year was the year that introduced garage rocking duo Royal Blood, who exploded into mainstream popularity with their self-titled debut album.
Royal Blood bounded with energy and carried influences from many of the grunge pioneers. However, it carried even more of an influence from the fuzzed out deep notes and heavy groove focus of stoner rock, to the point that one reviewer on this very site summed up the album as:
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More Wolfmother than any other garage rock pioneer band you can think of.”-Guzzo
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You see, the band I am writing about also happens to be of a heavy rocking ‘grunge’ duo with greater leanings towards stoner rock towards anything else. However, while Royal Blood tended to take from the atmospherics and production of Wolfmother, Powder For Pigeons instead borrows from the raw gut punch skull crunching sludge riffs of the Melvins, leading towards a sound different enough in its own merit to be comparable, but not confused with, that of last year’s breakthrough act.
Powder For Pigeons is an Australian duo who currently live in Frankfurt, Germany. In their previous 2 releases, both titled
Powder For Pigeons, there was much more of a Kyuss influence. With the toned down feel and a murky sound, with a groovy sound reminiscent of that from many of the 90’s Palm Desert bands. With
Washed, Dried, Brain Fried, however, the band’s influences go north to bands like the Melvins. Most apparent through the slightly clearer production compared to the preceding releases.
The best part of this album is its length, there are 8 tracks, some so short they don’t even reach 2 minutes and the longest not even long enough to cross 4 minutes. This is what keeps the album from being tiresome, as no track overstays its welcome, the band just goes in, plays with complete ferocity, and moves out before the songs get redundant. This allows for a fresh, short listen that will not take too much of its listeners‘ time(this was a problem some had with
Royal Blood.)
In total, Powder For Pidgeons have crafted a very short yet fun listen, there may be complaints about there not being much variety, but that’s the point.
WDBF is supposed to be an enjoyable barrage of hard riffage that thrills its audience, but is concise enough not to overstay its welcome. In some ways it doesn’t match up to the quality to the band’s previous efforts, but even then the band understands how to use its mix of punk rock, stoner rock, and grunge effectively enough to create its unique style without compromising the fun to be had when listening.
