Limelight
Spaced-out US collective reach new heights with their debut album.
WHEN A BAND describe themselves as“cosmic doom opera” and call their members names like Nova 10101001, it’s clear that their music is going to be a trip.
They Watch Us From The Moon live up to the billing on their debut album, Cosmic Chronicles, Act 1: The Ascension, a five-track concept odyssey lurching through spacey, Sabbath-esque riffs and a story fit for a sci-fi epic. Slathered on top of the Kansas sextet’s doom-mongering is an unusual twist of two soaring, melodic vocals – from both Nova 10101001 and Luna Nemesis.
“There’s nobody that sounds like us,” guitarist The General Shane Thirteen proclaims.“There’s nobody in doom or metal or a combination thereof that has accomplished the sound that we have. The vocal ability of the ladies is just phenomenal. What’s going on with that took us from a pretty thick rock’n’roll band to an element of‘holy crap’.”
The band’s beginnings weren’t quite so spectacular, though. The guitarist says they were“originally just a dad band”before the line-up changed and things got serious. Their first release was 2020’s Moon Doom! EP, followed by the single Return To Earth a year later.
There’s an undeniable penchant for long songs and cyclical riff worship on their latest: no track here is shorter than six minutes, with two topping the 10-minute mark. A running theme pervading the whole shebang is space, with the band offering their members an outlet for a long-rooted love of sci-fi.
The concept focuses on a rock’n’roll band invited to play at the pyramids in Egypt, and when their“sonic resonance” inad
