ALL FLESH IS GRASS AND ALL ITS GRACE IS AS THE FLOWER OF THE FIELD

Between psychedelia and post rock, this debut of the Portuguese one man band HANDWRIST is first of all an excellent album. Usually this kind of one man bands are based on keyboards, but Rui Botelho Rodrigues is, I think, first of all a guitarist. Guitar and vocals apart, the rest is electronic.

Despite being a debut, this is already a mature album from the start to the end. One thing that surprised me is the screaming os "Sundog", which makes it a little weird even if the basic melody is very "major chords" oriented.

The arrangements and the production are remarkable, especially if we think that's an own made debut. Said so, let's see what it's about: there are vocals, but they don't prevale on the other instruments. The voice, sometimes sung, sometimes spelled and sometimes screamed, is completely part of the music.

Music mainly guitar oriented, but like the vocals, even when the guitar is in foreground, it's well integrated with the rest. Also the effects are well chosen and dosed.

The album's title is taken from the bible's "Old Testament", and all the song's lyrics seem to be related to the bible, in particular the lyrics of the closing track "The Tree of Knowledge" are directly taken from the Genesis.

The album is relaxing in, let's say, the first half, then becomes harder up to the closing track, which features screaming, fast drumming and distorted guitar, that's really heavy and justifies the classification as psychedelic. On this track in particular, the crescendo reminded me to a track of a band that I like a lot: "Tsunami" of the Dutch "37005".

Since when I've become aware of this project, found in a PA forum thread, posted by the artist, I've given some random listens to his albums, all downloadable for free on Bandcamp, and I've immediately found it very interesting, so I suppose this will not be my last review of his work.