Shooting Guns - Flavour Country

2017 release. While Canadian sextet Shooting Guns is known (and oft-nominated) for their film soundtrack work (like Netflix hit WolfCop), Flavour Country is the band's fastest, heaviest and most visceral material-a collection of anthems to jettison from this universe into the multiverse. The album features some of the band's most atmospheric sounds: there are slight hints of Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western twang amidst the looping Meddle-era Pink Floyd heavy psych and driving drone reminiscent of Bobby Beausoleil's belladonna laced soundtrack to Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising. But for the most part, the band is out for blood, regardless of tempo. Album opener "Ride Free" kicks off with a blistering wall of guitars, blaring and rattling out of the gate like mutant progeny to fellow Canadian biker-rock heroes Steppenwolf duly firing all of the guns, exploding into space and returning to hunt down every last one of us. It accelerates from there: "French Safe" sounds like an unhinged battalion of musicians driving full throttle like a scene from a George Miller Road Warrior movie. Biting, lengthier tracks like "Simian Shelf" and the title track occupy the heavy end of the psychedelic spectrum, haunting the foggy moor between early, bluesy Sabbath-styled doom riffery and heavy pulse-riding kraut-rock.