Kyuss - Blues for the Red Sun (1992)^{Release ID: 163}

It grooves, it jams, and it sounds like the dudes are having a lot of fun. Tracks bounce back and forth between halfway energetic rockers to total lethargic chill tunes, probably dependent on whether the band members were drunk or high at the time. The songs kinda do their thing for anywhere between 1 and 7 minutes, and eventually the whole thing is over.

For me, quite boring. Riffs and vocals are generic, and rhythm section may as well not be there, just doing the basic minimum to back the tracks most of the time. There’s no mood or passion to it, they just jam in a rather repetitive way until they get bored and start a new track. The more conventional songs are just a step away from Grunge, which isn’t a good thing to my ears.

I can see people enjoying this the same way one would rock out to some butt rock, but unfortunately I’m not one of those people.

The first couple of Kyuss albums didn’t exactly set my house on fire. There were some promising moments but the song-writing was generally inconsistent & the production & musicianship weren’t amazing. The Sons Of Kyuss album was nothing more than a primitive learning experience for a band that was still developing the skills of their trade. The debut Kyuss album “Wretch” was a step up from there but it included more than half of the tracks from the debut & the production still wasn’t ideal. The things that stood out to me from those records were a singer with true charisma & a solid rhythm section. Songs like “Son Of A Bitch” proved that Kyuss had what it took to create great rock music but could they do it consistently?  

“Blues For The Red Sun” instantly proved that they could. It showed improvement in all areas. The production was much more suitable than we’d heard from them before. It was warm & fuzzy but also very heavy with a real 70’s vibe to it. Brant Bjork’s drumming was a lot more interesting than it ever had been in the past while Nick Oliveri’s bass sound was more powerful. The real improvement from an instrumental point of view though was in Josh Homme’s performance on guitar. He seemed to struggle with his technique a little on past releases but here he is far more in control. There seems to be a continual stream of quality riffs being pumped out of his axe & even his solos are a lot more accomplished than anything he’d offered up previously. There's been a noticeable increase in the amount of psychedelia on offer here & the band seems to be having great fun jamming away. There’s even a few psyched out instrumentals to break things up. I don’t think the band were capable of pulling that sort of thing off previously so it’s a strong indication of how far they’d come.  

As with “Wretch”, John Garcia’s vocal performance is again the highlight of the album in my opinion. I simply love the guy’s voice. That gnarly desert accent does it for me every time. In fact, if I go through the tracklisting & pick out my favourite songs they will inevitably feature a major contribution from John. Don’t get me wrong. I don‘t mind instrumental pieces like “Molten Universe”, “Apothecaries Weight” & “Caterpillar March” but John really takes this music to another level altogether. I think the album would have been even better if Kyuss tried harder to utilize John’s assets. There could be way more of his signature vocal style included here. Why smother his voice with effects on “Mondo Generator”? I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the song but I feel quite confident that I would have enjoyed it more without the effects.  

Whereas “Wretch” suffered from inconsistent song-writing “Blues For The Red Sun” is at the other end of the spectrum altogether. In fact if you disregard the three second waste of space closing track “Yeah” it doesn’t include a weak song. “Green Machine”, “Allen’s Wrench” & my personal favourite “50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up)” are amongst the most potent material Kyuss ever recorded while tracks like “Thumb” & “Freedom Run” are also of a very high quality. All of the issues I had with "Wretch" have been addressed here & Kyuss have proceeded to create some far more substantial music that is both endearing & engaging but also very fun. This is a great example of the stoner rock genre done well.