KYUSS — Welcome To Sky Valley (review)

KYUSS — Welcome To Sky Valley album cover Album · 1994 · Stoner Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
bartosso
Spirit of the Desert

Queens Of the Stone Age's guitarist, Josh Homme, once had a better, today a bit underrated band. Kyuss, known as stoner metal pioneers, are still unrivalled in their domain. WELCOME TO SKY VALLEY was their fourth opus and after 17 years it is still intriguing and sounds fresh. Hypnotizing and psychedelic atmosphere of sunny flatlands mixed with hard rock feel and downtuned guitar heaviness resulted in the album that became an inspiration to many modern stoner and post metal bands. If you haven't listened to it yet, it's high time you do it. Beware though, since the Spirit of the desert never sleeps.

Everything here - thick and muffled sound of downtuned guitars, groovy drumming, hypnotizing hard rock vocals - is aimed at creating a spiritual atmosphere of the region, title Sky Valley. Love to this place manifested not only in the recording - Kyuss played illegal gigs in the desert, with people all around, reveling in music and headbanging. If it weren't for the fact that some songs are too simple, both in terms of ambiance and structure, I would gladly rate it with 5 stars. There are moments of such a visionariness("Demon Cleaner"), beauty("Whitewater") and power("Supa Scoopa..."), that listening to this album is always inspiring.

Highly recommended to fans of Tool, (early)Queens of the Stone Age, Monster Magnet, Led Zeppelin.
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