This album comes as springtime lightens and warms up the days and the music it contains is like a fresh breath of air with the three-piece French band´s freewheeling daredevil hippy-approach to the stoner music style. It is fast, it is fun and it is like they are inspired by the Bob Dylan quote, ”Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free”.
The band took the first steps with a release in 2015 which was a bit lo-fi and recorded in their living room but showed a lot of potential. Their next came in 2017 with long, fuzzy tracks that had a heavier sound. And now they are here with their latest album where they have found their footing in the stoner genre with an album that to many might serve as Proust´s Madeleine cake. This is because it brings back memories of decades ago when Blue Cheer and Ten Years After ruled a music style we then called acid rock or blues rock. Many bands and decades after, we now call it Stoner Rock or Stoner Metal.
This band is down to the basics, firing fast paced songs with drums, bass and guitar plus engaging vocal. The fast-paced first track ”Ilion” where the cymbals whisper a start and the wah-wah fuzz starts the party accompanied by fast drums and bass. The bass throughout the album holds the rhythm and follows the lead guitar. Sometimes it holds the rhythm to let the drums run free to energize the music.
The next song, ”Hrosshvelli’s Ode”, begins as a contrast to the first song as it starts slowly and rolls the pace up towards faster rock´n´roll. First, there are light blows on the bass drum before the bass guitar comes along rumbling accompanied by the guitar. The song has fascinating shifts between only vocals with bass guitar and drums in between the fuzzy hard-hitting stoner guitar sound.
”Altostratus”, the third short song, serves as a kind of muffled breather before you are yanked dazed and happy into the wake of the fast tempo of ”Cloud Sultan” by the rhythm section. The guitar hits hard throughout, but comes out with fierce solos at the same time holding the melodic theme intact. The drumming behind it all is like a playful drum solo played fast and furious while the guitar and bass hold the fort.
The way they use the full potential of their three instruments with brilliance through the songs is impressive. It is almost as if you can feel the joy the band has composing and playing this fast and sometimes intricate music. Sometimes it is like a rollercoaster ride as the jubilant backing vocals on ”Skeleton Void” indicate. This song also starts with more blues in the sonics than the other songs and after a while the bass takes the lead before a glimmering guitar shows up and reveals some quite impressive guitar work on this fast and intense track. It is as if they wanted to go for a controlled reckless ride, and they succeed. The band takes a short break with ” Soft Was The Night” and speed up again with ”Laniakea Falls”. This song sums it all up. A slow start, building up the excitement. Changes between some calm bass driven sections leading to some kind of anarchistic psych rock sections when the guitar runs wild and the vocals are sometimes as deep as a C&W song.
The times we are in might show that the stoner genre is gearing up again as both this band and Weedpecker releases high quality stoner music in the wake of bands like Stinking Lizaveta, Alabama Thunderpussy, We and US Christmas. To induce the music with so much anarchistic feelgood as Decasia do on this album, one has to have a lot of practice and skills. Only then can one give the listener the feeling of a happy-go-lucky improvisation music style that shines through the music on this album. Quite impressive how they manage this and make such engaging music.
