It’s usually when I go into a debut album from any given band that I assume it’s a young band with young musicians who are taking their first steps into the music world with their first honest piece of music for us to hear and hopefully enjoy. But, as you know, that’s far from always the case as we get experienced musicians constantly coming together to create new sounds for us to lap up that their other bands just simply can’t produce. With a collective experience of a whopping 100 years behind Hippe Death Cult, it’s this debut album that is no less than earth-shaking.

The realm of heavy psych is one that just never seems to stop growing without making much new headway in terms of making any crazy new sounds or expanding the sonic territory, and I couldn’t be any more content with that reality given the extremely high quality and quantity of the material that we constantly get from the genre. Case and point: “111”. Smashing in with seven tracks that stretch over 40 minutes of heavy riffage that is nigh on intoxicating as Hippie Death Cult uses all that musical experience to the fullest as you can hear the talent and expertise poured into every single note that “111” smashes down. So much is packed within this album that it’d be impossible for one to say that they’ve heard all that there is to offer in this magnificent offering on their first listen as it’s with each step and all the paces that Hippie Death Cult expertly times that allows this record to become much more than a copy cat heavy psych record that we’ve all heard before. Instead, “111” immediately shows it’s so much more than that. Hippie Death Cult shows with maximum quality and excellence that their first foray into heavy psych as a band is fraught with one spectacle after another and this record is something that should be enjoyed for every single lick of it is mastery to behold.

We’re lucky enough to live in a time where such works of the genre are seemingly commonplace, but that doesn’t take the gravity away when a new slab of excellence like this comes our way. If “111” is just a taste of what we’re to expect from this act, then Hippie Death Cult is already a name that you should know and respect.

LISTEN to “111” on Bandcamp here.

LIKE Hippie Death Cult on Facebook here.