Did you know that the English words “trope” and “tropical” share the same etymology? Hello, and I’m sorry to welcome you to this heavy metal album review. It’s true, though! Both words come from the Greek verb ‘trepein’ (τρέπειν), meaning “to turn,” which extends to ‘tropos’ (τρόπος), meaning “a turn” or “a turning.” The initial definition of a trope is a “turn of phrase,” but specifically we use it to refer to a quick shorthand or recognizable pattern that bypasses a bunch of explanatory work. Tropical, on the other hand, takes its name from the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, which reference the axial tilt that results in the seasonal turning from one to the other of Earth’s two farthest-flung subsolar points.
If you’re wondering what in the blue etymological fuck any of this has to do with Italy’s Desert Collider, friend, let us beg each other’s pardon. On their tremendous debut album Generation Ship: Endless Drift Through Infinity, Desert Collider lays the gauntlet of every last stoner metal/desert rock trope as if to say, “Yes, we both know what game we’re playing, so rather than waste your time trying to understand where we come from, why don’t you get your head straight and follow us where we’re going?” The signposts are all there, of course – the ones that point to Kyuss and Lowrider and Dozer and Monster Magnet and Sleep. But while Desert Collider’s command of genre signifiers is complete and immaculate, rather than spin their wheels through a perfunctory exercise in mere form, these eight songs quiver and roar with the captive heat of stones left to bake in the sun. The majority of this world’s deserts, after all, exist in the tropical zone that hugs the Equator like the cummerbund of some gleefully corpulent bauxite tycoon, and Desert Collider turns that sun-parched clarity into a magnificent, immersive hour of powerful riffs and sprawling atmosphere.
The tools they use, though? They’re the honest-to-goodness realness. The first thing that sets Desert Collider apart as a bright light is their mastery of tone, because, friends and lovers, the tones on this bad boy? My blessed flamin’ hot soul, Federico Costanzo’s guitar alone is a deep, curling buzz when it stomps on the distortion, wub-wub-wubbing with the kind of blissfully fuzzed-out resonance that might shake loose the fillings from your teeth. We’re talking full-on Kyuss or Acid King levels of asphalt-buckling, whale-summoning righteousness here, and that’s even before we get to the laser-beam blues simplicity of the clean lead tones.
And, cousins, would you believe me when I say that Manuel Colucci’s bass is like the most graceful leg of God come down to smite any who do not swear fealty to the true faith of the earthquake? Andrea Casagranda’s drums thump and swack with a marvelous straightforwardness, but they shine even more during the album’s more spaced-out psychedelic jam sections, where the ride cymbal measures out cosmic drift and the rounded tautness of the snare echoes an eternal heartbeat. Federico Gianfanti’s vocals, too, sometimes mimic the friendly sneer of Kyuss’s John Garcia, but for as often as they whip a song’s momentum forward with the energy of a freshly grip-taped skate deck, they also peel out into fits of repetitive, incantatory melody. Against the backdrop of all this wallop and happy clatter, Desert Collider has layered the judicious use of synthesizers and strings to launch these rock and roll bones into space rock fugue-state.
The second thing that works to set Desert Collider apart from a glut of stoner and heavy psych acolytes is pacing: Generation Ship is a beautifully paced album, which means that even as its runtime tips past the hour mark, the thoughtful way in which it unfolds makes it feel like it sails by in far less. The lengthy, scene-setting opening track moves through disparate sections that hint at the breadth of the album as a whole, but then lead single “Floating Space Hand” and its follow-up “Sonic Carver” really juice the throttle and stomp the gas. Elsewhere, the shit-kicking “ThumpeRRR” provides excellent contrast to the eleven-minute sprawl of “Orphans of the Sky Part II” with a rocket punch straight to the listener’s fleshy bits.
But even meticulous pacing across a full-album arc can only go so far if a band is lacking in what Desert Collider is not: songwriting acumen and riffs (and licks, and hooks, and leads, and more riffs). “Sonic Carver,” for example, even though it storms out like a straight-ahead stoner metal bruiser, that pouding energy burns itself out around the halfway point, after which it opens way out into a heat-mirage jam of languid, reverbed lead guitar and an insistent, recursive vocal hook that ends with, “love is all you have.” “Orphans of the Sky Part II” is built around one of the album’s biggest Great Big Fuck-Off Riffs, but it uses that riff smartly, and builds a whole edifice of tension and release with it. “Nomads of the Red Sun” overflows with “Planet Caravan” vibes with its mysterious acoustic lilt and hand percussion, and it offers a perfect vibe reset before the album’s penultimate song. “Far Centaurus Drifting Without Guidance Through Interstellar Space” is fourteen minutes of a fully-earned victory lap, but it still takes exactly the amount of time it needs, letting the listener drift while the atmospheric calm builds, eventually hitting an early crest at the 4:38 mark with a fantastic triplet riff. The real climax, though, is the extended slow-burn jam from around 8:30 all the way through to the end.
After that massive exhalation, the album closer “Nebuchadnezzar” almost feels out of place with its aggressively Motorhead energy, but every time I try to be cross about it, there’s a riff at the 2:12 mark that slaps the most giant smile on my face, and then the rest of the song becomes a joyous eruption, as if the band ALSO knew that they should have ended the album at “Far Centaurus…” but then someone whipped out that riff in the practice room and they looked at each other and grinned, dabbing the gathering sweat off their brows before digging deep and leaning hard into the unwritten and unspeakable language of bodies attacking the same irresistible groove. That’s one hell of a trophy.
(I’m sorry, and thank you, and yes, that’s trophy, another child of τρόπος; thank you for watching my TED talk, “A Silly Human Shoehorns Greek Lessons Into Stoner Metal.”)
