Samsara Blues Experiment – “Revelation & Mystery” (World in Sound 2011, WIS-3012)

After the acclaim of their first release, Long Distance Trip, Berlin’s Samsara Blues Experiment now graces us with a second release in the form of Revelation & Mystery.

The album has that heavy stoner feel throughout, very much in the sound of Black Sabbath, Clutch, Colour Haze, Seven That Spells, The Machine, and many others, yet it seems worlds apart from Long Distance Trip.

Revelation & Mystery is more song based than it is lengthy improvisational pieces. It has a very definite Black Sabbath and Clutch feel on a number of the tracks, which really drive along, grinding the mechanisms of the machine, and allowing the guitar to really come alive and take us on a crazy psychedelic trip, for which the band are well known, and here on this album, collectively and individually, the band are on fire, and running on full power.

The sound is very high quality and very well produced. It has good balance of heavy and mellow, fast and slow, and to me it shows that Samsara Blues Experiment have a lot more to offer than the Pink Floyd long improvisation stuff of their previous release. But for me, this is what I liked about them, and I find that Revelation & Mystery has none of this stuff on it sadly. It leans more to the heavier side of the band having a shorter track length, which unfortunately makes it not as experimental in my eyes. Good? Yes, but I really prefer all the long Pink Floyd moments of Long Distance Trip above the majority of the tracks on Revelation & Mystery. So, if that is what you like about Samsara Blues Experiment, then I imagine that you may feel the same way.

A great album nonetheless, and once again the cover artwork by Russian artist Oleg Korolev is also fantastic and worthy of a mention…

For more info visit: http://www.worldinsound.com, http://www.samsarabluesexperiment.com
Or e-mail: samsarabluesexperiment@gmail.com

Reviewed by Albert Pollard

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