MOUNDRAG: Hic Sunt Moundrages (HARD ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Over the last few years, duets have been flourishing. France is particularly fond of this minimalist form, with Electric Jaguar Baby and Knuckle Head being just two examples. The feverish energy of hard rock in general, and stoner rock in particular, lends itself ideally to this curious but often exhilarating mutation, and Moundrag are part of it.

Made up of two brothers, Camille and Colin Goellaën Duvivier, the band has one particularity, and not the least. Moundrag demonstrate that you can build hard rock without a guitar, which seems inconceivable given that the genre and its wild identity have been forged around the electric imagery conveyed by this instrument. Listening to "Hic Sunt Moundrages" at no point betrays the absence of these four or six strings, which in no way gags the wet ardour of this progressive-sprayed hard rock.

The omnipresent organ reminds the Deep Purple's heyday. Throughout, the ghost of Jon Lord shrouds this menu, as on the battling 'Demon Race', to which Colin's drumming lends a furious groove. In fact, the antediluvian colouring of the keyboards propels the music woven by the duo into a rift in time, between the late sixties and the early 70s. Just listen to the orgasmic 'The Creation' and its swaying pulse and you'll think you've stepped back fifty years. The same infectious energy, the same freedom but never dusty. While the vocals of organist Camille are no stranger to the progressive sap that runs through the veins of 'Hic Sunt Moundragues', and witness the beautiful, tender, woody ballad 'Shade In The Night', it is above all the gigantic (from every point of view) 'La Poule' that brings it back to this genre.

Twenty (almost) instrumental minutes lined with warm keyboards that sound as if they've escaped from old Genesis, a veritable journey through sounds from another age. The G spot has been reached. Deliciously psychedelic, the album nonetheless questions our current world on the brink of apocalypse ('The Hangman'), a serious and desperate preoccupation that nonetheless inspires the duo to produce music that is not sombre but full of saving power, like a remedy for a reality riven by hatred and injustice.

Somewhere between Deep Purple and Kadavar, 'Hic Sunt Moundragues' delivers a cure for happiness that is nonetheless veiled in a dull melancholy, the first album from an astonishing keyboard/drums duo. - Official website

MOUNDRAG

HIC SUNT MOUNDRAGES

AUTRE LABEL

HARD ROCK