ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O.

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. is the debut album from Japanese psychadelic rock act Acid Mothers Temple. The album was released in 1997, so this is not an old sixties gem that no one has ever heard about.

The music on Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. is utter noise. Now I don´t normally state something like that this early in my reviews. I usually wait until my conclusion with such utterings but in this case I´ll make an exception because this album is beyond my comprehension ( I guess I´m not the right target group). I put the album on and expected some good psychadelic rock but instead I´m met by a wall of noise, and I mean NOISE. It sounds like someone dropped a lot of acid, turned the volume all the way up,jammed for about an hour and then released that jam session as an album ( It must have been a real bad trip). The noisy section continues for about 30 minutes before the album quiets down for a while. The noise returns and then we´re actually treated with something that is melodic but too repetitive in the end. The album ends with more noises. I have never heard anything like this before and I´ve listened and still listen to both grindcore and noisecore bands. Many of those bands almost sound melodic compared to this music. Most of the music on Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. actually reminds me of Noisecore played in mid tempo instead of blastbeat pace.

This resembles torture. They shouldn´t have used something civilized like Metallica to torture those poor souls on Guantanamo. This album would have been a much better choice. They would have confessed to anything within a couple of minutes, I´m pretty sure of that. This is unbearable for me. I was sure this was a joke the first time I listened to it, but now I´m not so sure.

I can´t really comment on the musicianship as it is non existent. I can only hear what is happening towards the end of the album in the melodic quiet part and there the musicianship seems allright.

The production is extremely lo-fi and too loud which means that the sound is totally distorted and you can´t hear what´s happening most of the time.

This is without a doubt one of the worst albums I have reviewed so far and I have really tried to imagine who would enjoy this music and found no answer. 1 star is deserved for this extremely noisy and repetitive album. I like psychadelic music but this is just too far out. I really hope that the next albums from Acid Mothers Temple are better than this one. Talking about getting off to a bad start.

The first thing that appears clearly is the reason why the lineup is made of about 15 musicians. You need a lot of people to make all that noise. I have tried to listen to this album very carefully, and after the first 10 minutes the only relevant things are voices (maybe?) and electric guitar that could have been recorder directly from the Pompeii's version of a saucerful of secrets. The problem is that those sounds are lost in the noise. The rhythmic base is probably 7/4, I'm not sure, but it doesn't matter very much, as all the instruments play noise. At about 11 minutes, the bass tries some variations, but they can be catched only with a lot of attantion, apart when the drums are listenable. That's when a structure seems to appear (minute 12:30 more or less). At minute 15 I start wondering why there are so many "subtitles" to the only track present. It's true the the first minute is quiet and totally different, but at this point it justifies only 2 sub-track names, not 11. The bass base stops at minute 18 40 seconds later tho noise stops and a (keyboard?) chord fills the scene. Something like Tangerine Dream's Zeit. A distorted voice starts sayin something, and this is not bad. A bit of krautrock? Surprise! A string instrument (acoustic guitar) and some voices appear and leave suddenly to give room to drums and a different type of noise. This is not casual. Noise and pauses appear to be studied. At minute 24 it becomes purely "electronic", in the original mening of the word. Like a 50s SciFi soundtrack, with the addition of distorted voices. Unfortunately it turns back to noise in few seconds. At minute 26 I decide to give up. I resist until minute 28, but it's too much. I'll go for a bit of "snow goose" now.

If you REALLY like psichedelia, you can give it a try. Two stars only for real fans of the genre.