Praise for The Skull Defekts‘ Peer Amid from San Francisco?s aQuarius Records: It’s like the second coming of late great rhythmic post rockers Lungfish. This latest disc from Swedish hypno rockers Skull Defekts finds the group teaming up with modern musical shaman (and former Lungfish frontman) Daniel Higgs, for what is easily the groups most ‘rock’ record yet, which is no bad thing, and with the addition of Higgs, the band’s sound is transformed into something that to these ears sounds remarkably like a modernized, supercharged Lungfish.

Skull Defekts, like Lungfish before them, are obsessed with rhythm, and repetition, and their songs bear this out, often comprised of just one or two parts, repeated over and over, trance-like and mesmerizing, the band locking in tight, and getting all droned out and hypnotic and krautrocky, constantly shifting but minimally and subtly, so on the surface. It’s total zoner psychedelic drone rock bliss, but closer listening reveals a constantly mutating underbelly innercore, and on Peer Amid, Higgs acquits himself nicely, taking an approach not that dissimilar to his Lungfish days, short shards of lyrics, more like mantras, repeated over and over.

He’s in full shamen mode, the band his high priests, the normal Skull Defekts fleshed WAY out, lush and layered, with tons of extra effects, electronics, percussion, the guitars super thick and distorted and heavy, the perfect bed for Higgs’ inspired lyrical rants. The overall sound slipping from the noise rock / krautrock hybrid of the title track, to the almost Bleach era Nirvana sounding ‘No More Always’, to the Eastern tinged midtempo dirgery of ‘Gospel Of The Skull’, that is probably as perfect a realization of the Skull Defekts / Daniel Higgs hybrid as to be found here -the main riff sounding almost like something off Sun City Girls’ Torch Of The Mystics, and Higgs’ vocals all over the place, nearly operatic, super intense and over the top.

The rest of the record offers still more inspired, next level, spiritual hypno noise rock, rhythmic mantra drone psychedelia, in the form of the creepy vocal driven drag of ‘The Silver Ring’, with its brooding ambience chant-like vox and crashing distortion.  And the tribal buzz drenched ‘In Majestic Drag’ with its huge drums, crackling crumbling distortion, strange shimmering ambience, and still more crooned moaned vox.
And ‘Fragrant Nimbus’, with a main rhythmic groove that almost sounds like the Ex, Higgs, sing / speaking over the top, sparring with extra percussion, squalls of super intense psychedelic freekout, the vocals multi-tracked creating strange harmonies. Plus ‘What Knives, What Birds’, another -almost- funky sounding jam, that wreathes the rhythms in distorted processed vocals, winding tangled distorted guitar melodies.

And finally, ‘Join The True’ with a killer bass heavy rhythm, circular and mesmerizing, Higgs, vocals an ominous spoken word, the vocals and instruments locked tight for a nearly unshifting 3 minutes, before exploding into a majestic bit of melodic crashing and soaring, again, reminding us a bit of Nirvana’s Bleach, albeit filtered through both Lungfish AND Skull Defekts, the result a glorious slab of super rhythmic, catchy and melodic, heavy and trancelike hypnorock bliss!

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