Dead Meadow - 'Howls From The Hills' (Xemu) Released 14/05/07

Psst! Hoping to unearth a little-heard bravura blast of classic psych-rock roar? Then step right up, dear consumer, for this re-release of Dead Meadow's impossibly rare second album delivers the consciousness-expanding goods in a pretty astounding fashion. Originally put out on Fugazi bassist Joe Lally's tiny Tolotta label in 2001, 'Howls from the Hills' captures the celebrated Washington, DC trio flooring the distortion pedals with amp-busting aplomb. Recorded on a remote Indiana farm (which explains the snaps of a particularly shaggy sheep that grace the album's artwork), the album is stylistically similar to the band's excellent 2000 debut, which Xemu reissued last year to much acclaim.

As such, you'd still suspect the three-piece pack a collective PhD in vintage hard rock and psychedelia assimilation, the songs are little more than excuses for guitarist-singer Jason Simon to unleash another speaker-shredding riff prior to embarking on an umpteenth uncommonly captivating epic expedition up and down the fretboard, and the lyrics drip with dragons, swords and sorcerers to an extent where it's quite likely Dead Meadow's bong is loaded with shredded highlights of the JRR Tolkien oeuvre.

Only this time around everything's heavier. A whole lot heavier, with the amps turned up to earth-trembling level 11 and beyond, whilst the tempos have been sedated to a near-immobile point where there's barely any detectable movement left. Sounds dull, but the crawling grooves cooked up by Simon, bassist Steve Kille and drummer Mark Laughlin frequently resemble stampeding elephants in slow motion; totally unstoppable, fiery, bulky and muscular, but incapable of speeding up beyond the snail's pace, so that anyone caught in their route has plenty of time to step to safety. Were they not hypnotised by the herd's sheer destructive force, that is.

As a result, the diversity, pop chops and lightness of touch essayed on the brilliant breakthrough platter 'Feathers' (2005) remain a remote possibility, but that hardly matters when you're spellbound by the Led-Zep-45-playing-at-33-rpm crunch of 'White Worm' and the mountain-levelling, riff-sprouting power of 'One and Old' - imagine top-form Black Sabbath slowing down a bit more, and you're getting near to the track's sinister sizzle. Elsewhere, the band display their emerging melodic flair with the acoustic folk-blues of 'One Thing I Don’t Know', whilst the churning gallop of 'Everything's Going On' plunges headfirst into a reservoir of Stoogesian fuzz-boogie stomp and the slide-enhanced 'Breeze Always Blows' escalates into cosmos-straddling space rock levitation.

With only the odd misguided plunge to stoner-sludge monotony to sour the pulverising proceedings, 'Howls From The Hills' is a minor buried treasure in the oversubscribed psych-rock rack - and the best possible preparation for Dead Meadow's fifth studio album, due out late Summer.