Bigelf

There’s nothing ordinary about the fabled Los Angeles quartet Bigelf. In fact, even the extraordinary are crushed in the wake of a heroic bombast so brilliant, you can’t help but be swept adrift by the doomed mist of infectious melodies and chilling harmonies that collide with an otherworldly embrace of the psychedelic on “Cheat the Gallows,” the band’s debut release for Linda Perry’s Custard Records.

The epic album is the soundtrack for new world disorder. We’re talking about a pop-cultural phenomenon shaped by the muse of Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Queen and The Beatles. Bigelf are massive in stature, muscular in tone and beautifully diabolic, oozing with the credibility of artistic savant and ironclad integrity.

Bigelf take hard rock into the future, embracing the genre’s rich cultural past and reinterpreting it with a slant and skew that gives the new millennium a sound it’s been waiting far too long for: “Strawberry Fields” tossed with the acid-wash of mushroom caps, “The Wizard” taken to whole new heights of paranoia, “Dream Police” with souped-up squad cars, and a more divine “Karn Evil No. 9.”

From the hyperkinetic zeitgeist and manic sideshow glee of opening colossus “Gravest Show on Earth,” to the cinematic sound explosion of closing track “Counting Sheep,” the run-of-the-mill gets run through the mill on “Cheat the Gallows,” as Fox, guitarist Ace Mark, bassist Duffy Snowhill and drummer Froth dare modern rock and roll to try and keep pace. They pillage the tired and thought-to-be-true with a brazenly aggressive approach to guitar driven histrionics, haughty Hammond organ and majestic Mellotron tapestries, and a bottom end that spins, swirls and a surrounds the senses with penetrating bass lines and an upright backbone of drums that pave the defiant pace.

“Gravest Show on Earth” is the quintessential opening track, a twisted joyride of marching drums, sinister vocals that will make Robin Zander squirm with pride, and a sonic smorgasbord of Sgt. Pepper-worthy salutations that beckon you in with a long, twisted finger and set the tone for the album’s ensuing cuts. “Blackball” is a heavy, down-tuned swash of melodic rapture saturated in a lyrical escape from the corporate stranglehold, while “The Evils of Rock and Roll” features the band’s signature maniacal vocals atop a Tony Iommi-inspired guitar assault. Throughout, Bigelf embrace their unwavering affinity for not only honing a pop aesthetic, but honoring it throughout the song. “No Parachute” and “Race with Time” shift into demented shades of Pink Floyd-fashioned hypnotic psychosis, “Superstar” submits to the saucy seduction of a rock and roll sellout, and “Hydra” is a frenzied rush of steel-toed swagger that drips with chaotic power and is drenched in hallucinatory Bigelf dynamics.

With the release of their “Closer To Doom” EP in 1995, Bigelf established themselves as one of the founding fathers of the psychedelic doom movement that spawned the Los Angeles stoner-rock scene. In the 13 years since, they’ve released two full-length albums and attained cult phenomenon status overseas, most notably in Europe and Scandinavia. Both those albums were met by major-label recording contracts that promised worldwide success, but instead resulted in the corporate backwash that has defined the modern music industry.

But that is the past, and the future is here. Bigelf have cheated the gallows and come out stronger for the wear. Now it’s time for the world to pay the piper at the gates of dawn…

The reign of Bigelf is upon us.

-Paul Gargano, 07/08