APPALACHIAN TRANSLATOR

Appalachian Translator are a three-piece outfit by three Primak brothers, who have had much experience and grown up through home recordings. Yes it's no problem to say that from their 'Garbage Snake' (the roots of Appalachian) era, they have continually built extensive experience and massive material for this terrific debut album. You can see such a kaleidoscopic effect even only listening to the first track. Indeed they say they should be much influenced by such as British progressive symphonic rock, Hawkwindish space rock, Krautrock, new heavy progressive rock. But at least for me, they seem to be a faithful learner of shoegaze / garage independent rock. Their fuzzy and twisted style, especially Luke's low-tone and rumbling voices...I can feel as if they should be a follower of Stone Temple Pilots. (Luke's voices sound like Scott Weiland's ones...any comments?)

Anyway here are remarkably heavy and thickened sound 'mass' and sound 'lump', with adding on various material one after another. Consider they can well throw sci-fi noises, sometimes loud growlin', effects with echoic sounds and voices, and markedly stoner / shoegaze / garage low-tone guitar and bass sounds in this work. Their sharp-edged ensemble can pierce your brain slowly and steadily and knock you over the 'real' world to their psychedelia. only their pop sense can relieve you at a little time...can't it?

I wonder how they can be expressed - kaleidoscopic stoner Krautishly-psychedelic garage rock, in my humble opinion. In any case, please listen to the album and digest as you can.

Emulsion Tubes proves that immediately. Belonging to the album's extended tracks the opener surely is able to represent the distinctive genre - one of the highlights. You will find a spacey synthesizer intro first but the special trickiness comes from a combination of mellow parts (electric piano, acoustic guitar) and heavy moments (impetuous vocals and rhythm work, multiple electric guitar layers). What may sound like plain jamming for the first impression evolves to a well thought-out tension-filled diversity after some rounds - well done!

A bouncing bass guitar accompanies you through the next songs - besides the inventive vocals another remarkable goody. If it is the grooving Knowingly or the garage rock inspired Who Are Them and Masters of Gravity - the latter provided with crazy vocal contributions. The excellent False Alarm expresses some krautish weirdness where Un-ultimate is defining something new - a kind of space punk.

Showing a slight pop appeal first Research sounds retro - like longing for the beat music dominated 60s where the first bands tried to experiment with some psychedelia. But then they live up to their reputation when changing to a floating spacey section later on. The album offers another challenge with the lengthy Community - obviously an eclectic one and hard to describe. Initiated by a sample swirling crimsonesque guitars are taking control until the band is on the run to heavier territories. Then surprisingly some Bo Hansson feelings come up when going on to a more relaxed jamming middle section.

Again this seems to evolve to something simply repetitive at a first glance but the instruments are slightly varying in fact and care for some tension - probably the band's masterpiece. Finally the heavy Hunter From the Treetop is made up very experimental too where Luke Primak seems to scream his head off right in the middle of the song but fortunately is able to recover soon.

'Consider An Invasion' is a matured album, ambitious, far away from any mainstream. However - although containg some weirdness here and there consisting of really listenable songs, requiring full attention to reach for the depths. APPALACHIAN TRANSLATOR are on the way to new horizons here - that's unique. Recommended!