Helicon – Gehenna EP
A “mystery theatre theme” intro takes us on the eastern mystic trial and to a track, ‘In A Sad Red Dusk’, that wouldn’t be out of place on an album by The Church (Terra Nova Cain, say) although rather than hooking us in with a vocal it builds and builds instrumentally before going out on some scorching guitar work. A brief narcotic Glam stomp called ‘Black Hole Jets’ chants us to the closer ‘We’re Gaen Tae The Moon’ (yes, Helicon are Scottish) – a nine minute plus full on psych binge that starts the Space Rock juju from the get go. The flame-thrower guitar is back again over a track paced very much like Black Sabbath‘s N.I.B. It’s compulsive and it certainly takes you out of orbit for its running time. There’s really nothing that I can say that should put you off listening to and preferably owning this EP. If it has a problem it’s that I’m not sure if the band have more to their pallet, it will take a listen to an albums worth of material to see if there is enough variation to make them a bigger than genre act, or even genre leaders. As it is this stands as an engaging introduction.