Time Traveling Blues

The second album by British metal band Orange Goblin features a female biker giving the viewer the finger on its cover, and literally starts with the sound of a motorcycle rumbling to life. Their lyrics are mostly about dragons and wizards, with the occasional spaceship thrown in, but the music is pure biker rock, with massive bluesy riffs seemingly played through amps the size of walk-in freezers, vocals like a bear vomiting, rattletrap drums, and the occasional injection of Deep Purple-ish organ on slow songs like “Shine.” This is music to be played at high volume while traveling at high speed, immediately prior to losing it on a bad curve.

Difficult to pinpoint a temporal signature for these brutish Brits but Altamont, 1969 would be a good start. Originally more of a death/doom outfit (the first release was on a flipside from Electric Wizard), they gave into their radar love with full-length debut Frequencies from Planet Ten and by its follow-up they hit the road as hard as the undead bikers in Psychomania. Ben Ward’s bellow gives this a harsher vibe than their American stoner rock brethren. “Blue Snow” and “Nuclear Guru” smash right through the TARDIS.