The Cedar Lounge Revolution

This weekend, for the first time in ages I’m off to a gig.

Hermano are playing the St. Andrews Lane this evening.

Who, you ask? Well, they’re a successor band to Kyuss. Who, you ask? Well the rather more famous Queens of the Stone Age were formed by two members of Kyuss. Who, you ask? Ah, get with the programme. They’re all stoner rock bands, stoner rock, or ‘desert rock’ as it’s sometimes termed, being a sort of sludgy riff heavy, downtuned, slightly psychedelic, close to Black Sabbath sounding style of music, but generally (although not in the case of Electric Wizard) without the nod to the occult. Bands in the style worth checking out are Nebula, Orange Goblin, Black NASA, Fu Manchu, but there are many many more.

The singer in Kyuss, John Garcia has had a somewhat less exalted career than his former colleague Josh Homme (of QOTSA). Not for him the celebrity plaudits. And QOTSA have had, to my mind a chequered career with fine albums interspersed by utter rubbish. Instead for Garcia the last decade has been about playing with Unida, Slo Burn and in the last seven years Hermano. Hermano has included refugees from various bands including the Afghan Whigs.

Now Garcia’s voice is an mixed blessing. Good and bad. Dependent on the track.

Still, their latest album …Into the Exam Room is inflected by an intriguingly similar musical aesthetic to that of QOTSA, albeit with an harder and more pronounced rock edge. Some call it a return to a classic rock sound of the 1970s. If so the coordinates are set close to the terrain staked out by Zeppelin rather than the more workaday ground covered by Deep Purple. Long gone now are the meditations on a Black Sabbath like sound. It may be still ’stoner’ rock, but it’s retooled into something bluesier.

Here for your consideration is a track from them from their previous album Dare I Say, entitled “My Boy” and another from Kyuss, their none more metal “Green Machine”.