I was pleasantly surprised when I recently received StarGazer’s newest record Psychic Secretions on the Nuclear War Now label. While I normally find myself trying out records from bands in Europe, after listening to “The Occidental Scourge” on a whim, I was suddenly hooked on this blackened death/proggy threesome. In fact, I’ve been listening to the entire record nearly every day.
There is some great bass tone here courtesy of fretless bassist The Great Righteous Destroyer. I’m just totally hooked on it. Using no distortion and being so upfront in the mix, you can’t help but feel some shades of those more progressive Death records as well those from bands like Atheist in the Tony Choy years. The sound is much more than that though, it’s rather fresh with only some sonic throwback to the 90’s. They don’t overdo it.
Psychic Secretions is the fourth full-length album in the StarGazer catalog and comes six years after A Merging to the Boundless. Serpent Inquisitor (guitar, vocals) explains, with every album, StarGazer tries “to produce something forward-thinking without breaking our traditional sound too much, or treading on our own toes.” Indeed, this is definitely forward thinking. It’s avant-garde, but not too much so. What this band really excels at is the blending and the bridging of different styles and sounds. One thing I should also note is that I get a small tinge of fellow-Aussies Destroyer 666 here and there, and I can’t help but smile.
You can hear “The Occidental Scourge” HERE at Nuclear War Now!
Psychic Secretions releases on February 1, 2021
