Review Summary: Production on Gravity X is superlative and conjures up a dense, heady, THC-fueled thunder cloud of earth-shifting, super-heavy grooves, guaranteed to instill profound feelings of riff rock euphoria in one and all.
Wallowing gleefully amongst the quilt-like density of a well-honed Kyuss riff can be a salutary joy unto itself, and these Swedish riff-rock vikings invoke the broadest, super-fuzziest, hemp-sticky guitar ooze outside of fellow Kyuss acolytes, Mammoth Volume, Lowrider and the resplendent Dozer ...let's not mince words here; Truckfighters Gravity X is an unrepentant, deliriously riffy, H-bomb loud, desert rock album, and it sits squarely between the hypnotic and opiated bombastic riff poetry of Kyuss's Sky Valley and the maddeningly compulsive groove rock of the first Q.O.T.S.A album...Truckfighters are a truly wondrous entity, a living breathing microcosm of all that was so majestic and exciting about the early monolithic rumblings of Stoner Rock, and the retrograde heaviness of the still mourned Mans' Ruin label, where pot-eyed musicians with lank, unkempt hair sloshing around the waistbands of their frayed loons were courted like prize stallions and for a few glorious years the zealous worship of planetoid heavy, Iommi guitars made fat bottomed rock utterly addictive again. Admittedly it's 2005 and if that wasn't depressing enough, the ghost of Nu-metal stubbornly refuses to dissolve and this current glut of one-dimensional MC5 wannabe's bore with their incessant, turgid Detroit posturing, and the interminable metal core scene is hell bent on making a mockery of what was once so fabulous about Thrash Metal, so amongst these moribund times, it's even more pertinent to cherish a band like Truckfighters, who are so unpretentious, willfully anachronistic and downright fun to listen to.
I genuinely had high hopes for Gravity X as like many other slavering riff junkies I was blown away when I first heard Truckfighters' fuzz rock magnum opus, "desert cruiser" as it single handedly raised the much maligned genre of stoner/riff Rock to hitherto unprecedented heights, which I admit sounds a tad hyperbolic, but even the mighty Dozer have as yet been unable to match the peerless thunder grooves of prime Kyuss, and Truckfighters are the clear masters of this marginal idiom, where low-slung, behemoth guitars, discharge the kind of deep-grooved fuzz rock penetration that makes light work of your skull plate and lodges feverishly hirsute power-chords deep into your frontal lobes, causing ecstatic dancing, crazed, Pavlovian strumming of imaginary Les Pauls, and the kind of flamboyant air drumming that if spotted indulging in might well result in an extended stay in a heavily guarded mental health facility...whereas many bands gradually lose momentum after their best opening salvo,Truckfighters grab you forcefully by the beard and the coiled, pendulous rock burn of "gargarismo" will get you into a florid bong-rock stance before you can say Spine of God. The burly yet honeyed guitar stylings of Josh Homme are to be found in abundance here from the bass-centric, staccato riff on "freewheelin" to the monstrous, doomy drone midway through "momentum" but these are mere tips of the trucker hat to the formidable talents of J. Homme since the heavy-load guitar triptych of Dango (guitar), Ozo (bass), Fredo (guitar) generate a unctuous tsunami of surround-sound guitar fuzz that is unquestionably their own...and with the rabidly funky, gunt riffage of Freewheelin' they actually manage to best their mentor as the mountainous guitar topography on "freewheelin" is so damnably bouncy, fruggable, boogie-some and bloody genius that it manages to tower over anything Q.O.T.S.A have served up since the halcyon days of their sublime S/T, yes, this weighty track has a delightful riff breakdown, manifesting itself as an auditory orgasm, as Dango, Ozo, Fredo lock down a bloated groove that's so addictive it might not actually be legal for younger viewers. At differing earth quaking junctures of Gravity X the extraordinary bass levels are tantamount to speaker genocide as these Swedish Fu Freaks inculcate the kind of be-deviled guitar/bass fuzz overdrive that could unnerve the mightiest of sub-woofers, and on a personal level I couldn't play this album any louder than 3 as my speakers shat themselves and the ensuing sonic holocaust may well have killed my flatmate outright.
The odds of listening to the tracks "desert cruiser" "momentum" "freewheelin", "A Zapruder" in a stationary position is as unlikely as refusing a freebie on Rose McGowan's, corpulent, chalk-white tits, ergo...It's a veritable stoner boner!...A covert governmental organisation could cannily subvert this riff grenade into a deadly musical neurotoxin as resistance is useless, and you will be beguiled for the 62 minute duration of Gravity X, pinned helplessly to the wall by Truckfighter's bowdlerizing, super-engorged fuzz tone but unlike many other riff rock bands with similarly beardist tendencies, Truckfighters have a refined sense of melody and groove so all the bombast is neatly tailored into a bell-bottomed shimmy that is both profoundly addictive and gloriously uplifting.
Production on Gravity X is superlative and conjures up a dense, heady, THC-fueled thunder cloud of earth shifting, heavy grooves guaranteed to instill deep feelings of riff rock euphoria in one and all.
Fave tracks: desert cruiser, momentum, freewheelin' "A Zapruder" (and the demonic wah-wah fuzz on 'Manhattan project' is total ***ing class!)
