Ecstatic Vision guitarist and founding principal Doug “Snake Sustaine” Sabolick spent (most of) 1998 to 2013 in the same essential seat for metalcore giant A Life Once Lost, whose final dispatch, the post-hiatus Ecstatic Trance (2012), toyed with as many psych and ’70s prog accents as the parent style would allow. Sabolick’s second act isn’t so much the Hawkwind, heavy krautrock or early-’70s proto-punk love letter the promo copy claims, but it does bear a resemblance to the late-’80s-through-early-’00s cross-sections of Monoshock, Liquorball, Temple Of Bon Matin, Brainbombs (in “gentler” mode), Vermonster, early Comets On Fire, Tono-Bungay, Vokokesh, the Mike Gunn and Japan’s P.S.F. Records roster that renders “uncanny” a gross understatement. Raw Rock Fury, the sophomore follow-up to 2015’s Sonic Praise, packs a convincing energy and wall-to-wall pummel that suggest the live show, make for a sentimental reminder of the aforementioned forgotten (relative) obscurities and completely negate the psych-rock 101 dilettantism of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard.
—Andrew Earles
