The Freeks
Shattered
(Heavy Psych Sounds)
What do you get when five seasoned, underground rock vagrants get their claws on some fuzz pedals, knock back a bottle of Monkey Shoulder, step into a recording space and let loose upon their gear like the MC5 did back in 1970 at Wayne State University? In this regard, the end result would likely be what San Diego psych quintet, The Freeks, are about to unleash with their new LP Shattered. These guys have been around for a bit and can WAIL, doing time with and putting on miles in Nebula, Fu Manchu, Mike Watt & The Secondmen and Clawhammer probably attributed to that. One of the more unique sounding bands affiliated with heavy rock scene, the efforts they sweat sound like the love child result of a collaborative recording session between Nebula and The Hellacopters. Funny thing, those two bands have actually toured together as a package but as for recording, negative (to my knowledge) but Shattered sounds damn close! These guys clearly didn’t care about what was happening in the outside world while the tape was rolling during all this.
Ripe with guitar effects, heavy bass lines and distorted vocalizations and a long, badass instrumental called “There’s No Turning Back.” Ruben Romano, the head cat in The Freeks may be known for his time behind the drum kit in the early days of the Fu and with Nebula, dons the rhythm guitar and lead vocal spot with his project. Shattered clocks in at twelve tracks with songs in all sorts of tempo and feel, no excessive adjectives are necessary to describe the trip except….bitchin’. Ruben and lead guitar counterpart Jonathan Hall let it fly like in tracks like “Tiny Pieces”, “Strange Mind” and the circus riff based “I’m A Mess”. “Strange Mind” also has their keys guy Esteban Chavez elicit the Rick Wakeman inside of him for a virtuosic keys performance that deserves some mention here. The choice cut on the album is “Fast Forward” with its Eastern sounding guitar tone and the buildup it has into a go ahead rocker, all that was missing was a gong , not being an A&R asshole, it’s just my opinion.
These dudes are solid and very worth your time to check out, so you should do that.
