Holy Mountain come pre-soaked in Mesoamerican mystery – with the reference to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s metaphysical mountain of the mind, the pre-historic landing pads of the Nazca lines and the stepped pyramid’s extraterrestrial architecture on their album cover, the ‘setting’ is staged for a particular peculiar trip.
It’s a familiar yet personal take on the classic “space, drugs n rock n roll” imagery traceable from Sun Ra and Hawkwind onwards.
And so on to the ‘set’…
Some might place this into the ‘stoner rock’ category.
Aye there are riffs, there are grooves, there are 2-note vocal chants of the Al Cisneros variety, but there is simply WAY TOO MUCH STUFF happening for this to be cannabinoidal, at least according to the popular interpretation of what it is to be stoned, i.e. lethargic, blissed out or burned out (an image more fitting for the opioid family I’ve always though, I guess ‘junkie rock’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it…)
There’s a whiff of that, sure, but the stop-starts, the shifts in tempo, time signature, tone and the incessant *enthusiasm* of this music is far too lucid.
Mercurial, energised, fanatically inventive, this is the psychopomp-osity of the shape-shifting shaman leading you through the wilderness, not the Buddha’s singular bliss.
True psychedelia, like you’re great-granddad-to-the-power-of-sixty used to know.
Ok, so you want reference points, not pseudo-mystick shtick?
Try Mammatus, Blue Cathedral era Comets on Fire, a splash of High on Fire and other music generally ‘on fire’.
But please, leave leave leave your body of collected records behind and immerse yourself in the immediate joys of this sweet release.
Words: C.R. Sanderson
