IKIHEVONEN

Bravo to psychedelia in Finland!

IKIHEVONEN is a three-piece band, with a bassist, a guitarist and a drummer - they are graduates of Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, very productive painters/artists, 2 Finns and 1 Swede, based in Helsinki. This eponymous album is their first and brilliant work, with full of their powerful ensemble!

From the beginning of The Main Reactor, you should be hard pressed with their machine gun sounds, with dry, violent and improvised drums and guitars. Their musical world is covered with fuzzy, lazy and crazy flavour and shaggy, druggie air. You cannot realize how you will be... Well just as getting to be a junkie, you must be absorbed deeply in the risky sounds. I feel their heavy and repetitive phrases can gradually drive you into the ground. And in the middle part some meaningless words are shouts from the hell, aren't they? I cannot help feeling so. They might show themselves as a huge and terrible nuclear reactor with this song. The scene has to change suddenly in the next Psychedelic Chicken. Gentle guitar solo and steady drumming once can make you relaxed - with foreboding dark atmosphere in it. Their play should get heavier and darker and drag your mind into psychedelia - exactly like a chicken, you'd be so weak! And as if a weak chicken is whipped again and again, heavily fuzzy riffs blow and shake our brain strongly. This middle part you can feel so impressed every time you listen to. It may be mysterious for you that even parts out of tune can be comfortable. Exactly a trap. A psychedelic trap it is! Drowning, as the name itself says, has hazy sounds from the deep sea - with noises as a drowning man cries over and over. You should understand the story is very oppressive, painful and choking. Even the strict drumming cannot make you safe and sound. At last only a piano with much tension can be left in your ear... Cool and clear persuasion with strict guitars and percussion is in Pakistan. What do they want to say here - using reverse sounds and soulful shouts? I wonder if they had visited Pakistan and got some complex feelings. Right? :-) Heavy palpitation should attack you! Sword Of Wisdom is a shard-edged, heavy-weighted sword, absolutely. By the sword you should be cut in pieces - with your hellish cries - there's no way you can protect yourself hahhaha! Well, what can a graceful piano let you feel By The Foot Of The Mountain? Only 90 second song really salvage you - for a while, yes only a while... And don't be deceived completely. Grunge Doom, with inorganic drum shots and guitar squeaks, can tear you up again. Although the word 'grunge' may remind you some industrial flavour, I do feel more of earache and more metallic one. Maybe you can be pleased with the middle part - a bit typical of grunge works - me too! However in the last you should be knocked away by eccentric noises. Interesting stuffs I feel. The last track NHL is the most electronic, the most inorganic, and the most ironic in this album. Even though the tune is electronic, their musical policy should not be altered naturally...surely progressive from start to finish!

This is another Finnish gem I wanna say! Highly recommended.

This first record of Ikihevonen (The Eternal Horse) delivers some nice raw artistic psychedelic sound of the underground from the streets of Helsinki. The basis of the music refers to trashy improvisational acid rock, which is expanded naturally with the musical personalities of the players. Heavy riffs, calm trippy ambiences, brutal hypnotic rock and wild experimentations unite as a solid musical entity. Quality of the recording is fine, and playing is spontaneous and mad, these fellows have certainly had possibility to create freely what they feel right. The basic rock-trio sound is expanded in studio with some keyboards and few vocal parts, and in my opinion the capacity of free musical innovation has been exploited pleasantly. When comparing to the live sound of the band, the sonar tapestry is slightly more sophisticated, maybe due the situation of being locked to a recording studio with possibilities for free expression process instead of a local underground gig venue. I would recommend this fluidly flowing raw record for anybody interested of sincere and avant-gardist psychedelic art rock.