Review by Daniel for Acid King / The Mystick Krewe of Clearlight - Free... / The Father, the Son and the Holy Smoke (2001)

This one is a split collaboration album from female-fronted San Francisco stoner/doom outfit Acid King (featuring French drummer Guy Pinhas who has also been involved with Fireball Ministry, Goatsnake & The Obsessed) & New Orleans psychedelic Southern rock/metal project The Mystick Krewe of Clearlight (featuring guitarist Jimmy Bower who has played with just about everyone including Corrosion of Conformity, Crowbar, Down, Eyehategod & Superjoint Ritual). The two bands sound completely different so the tracklisting doesn't exactly flow from one to the next. I fucking loved the Acid King material which can also be found as an isolated E.P. that was released in 2014. Their sound is super-dense & heavy as fuck with Lori S's vocals sounding very much like Hole front woman Courtney Love at times. When they get their doom on Acid King seriously crush & I'd highly recommend them to fans of Electric Wizard & Sleep. The two tracks from The Mystick Krewe of Clearlight are a very different proposition with "Buzzard Hill (My Backyard)" being a genuine Southern Metal groove-fest & the epic eleven minute closer "Veiled" starting off in Southern/stoner metal territory before veering off into a spectacular drawn-out psychedelic rock excursion of the highest calibre for the last seven minutes which was the highlight of the whole release for me personally. I can't say that The Mystick Krewe of Clearlight's groovy Southern/Stoner Metal stylings do much for me but when they decide to strip things back & get all trippy on me I find myself in a musical Heaven that I rarely encounter.

Overall, I'd suggest that labelling this split release as Southern Metal is disingenuous as there's really only one & a half tracks that fall into that category. It's more accurate to tag it with the overarching Stoner Metal banner with Doom Metal & Southern Metal secondaries in my opinion. I really enjoyed this record though. It's been one of the finds of the month for me, mainly for the Acid King stuff which is some of the best Stoner/Doom I've ever encountered to be honest. I'm gonna go with 4.5/5 for Acid King & 3.5/5 for The Mystick Krewe of Clearlight.