Bloody satisfying

With Blood Lust, Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats have released a modern stoner rock classic that truly draws a line in the sand—one that separates the posers from the people who actually grew up listening to this stuff.

Upon hearing (or reading) their name, one might think Uncle Acid is a completely different kind of band. Their full name conjures up images of a sophomoric, snot-nosed punk band that stands a good chance of never leaving the garage in which they were conceived. It would appear that “and the” bands are reserved only for novelty acts, and “& the” bands are even more rare.

Indeed, Uncle Acid’s name would likely cause an avid music listener to gloss over their record should they happen to come across it at Jackpot or Anthem. But that’s not something many music consumers have to worry about.

Uncle Acid’s second—and still most widely available—LP is a very short-run press, limited to a scant 100 copies. Their first record’s run was a fraction of that. In fact, Blood Lust, Uncle Acid’s second record, is in such short supply, that Uncle Acid—the man himself—hand-wrote a letter to accompany each copy. In Uncle Acid’s world, artistic dystopia reigns supreme—his reason for producing the 100 albums and their notes is simply because “nobody buys CDs anymore.”

But what about the music? Is the extremely limited record worth tracking down, or is it an obscurity for a reason? Well, it depends.

Back in 1968, Black Sabbath got together and came to be considered one of the most influential bands of all time. Their viscous, chunky, blues-inspired riffs would lay the groundwork for metal bands to come. As time went on, Ronnie James Dio joined Black Sabbath after Ozzy Osbourne left, and the smoky riffs left with Ozzy.

This “stoner metal” persisted down the years but mostly in the shadows of whatever metal flavor is popular at the time. It wasn’t until the inception of Kyuss, Fu Manchu and, later, Queens of the Stone Age, that stoner rock became a legitimate genre in mainstream American musical canon once more. At some point, stoner rock forked into its original form and a new mutation: stoner metal—a harder-edged and mostly slower form of stoner rock.

These days, it seems like increasingly more bands veer into the stoner metal category, checking their Sabbath-worship at the door. Uncle Acid wants to remind us to remember our roots.

Blood Lust borrows so heavily from Sabbath, one might think that it is an actual Sabbath recording. The whole thing, from the song titles to the mixing to the album cover reads, sounds and looks like an Osbourne-era Sabbath outing. From the opening Moog-like synth swell on “I’ll Cut You Down” that sounds right at home on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath to the album’s canonic closer, “The Withered Hand of Evil,” (Black Sabbath has a song titled “Hand of Doom”), Uncle Acid evokes every iteration of Black Sabbath worth sampling.

One curious effect that can be heard on Blood Lust is the omnipresent vocal effect found stuffed into every nook and cranny of the record. Borrowing exclusively from “Planet Caravan” on Sabbath’s album Paranoid, Uncle Acid recreates the vocal effects used on that track using what sounds like Ozzy’s actual method on the original recording—a revolving Leslie speaker. While “Planet Caravan” is arguably Sabbath’s most psychedelic song, Uncle Acid’s choice to use a rotary speaker effect on the entirety of Blood Lust is a good one. It allows Acid to engage the listener on a deeper level than “just a vocalist”—it gives him a depth as a vocalist that matches the hardy instrumentation put forth by the Deadbeats.

The closing track (not counting the hidden untitled track) is one of the best closers ever, containing more Sabbath Bloody Sabbath-esque synthesizer work, including some absolutely enthralling string-synth work that really puts the rest of the record into perspective as a journey rather than a regular listening experience. The untitled track doesn’t add much to the record other than a different Sabbath nod, this time in the form of “Master of Reality”-styled acoustic guitar work.

Truly, this album touches on every Black Sabbath element, from the aforementioned takes to the opening sample snippets on “I‘ll Cut You Down,” that echoes Sabbath classic “Sweet Leaf.” Because Sabbath didn’t put out nearly as many albums as they should have considering that none of the members are dead, one would be wise to find a copy of Blood Lust. The record is as close to a new Sabbath album as our generation will get, and it’s a tasty throwback to a time when rock music made the listener feel special.