From The Ages

Product Description ------------------- 2013 album from the award-winning San Diego power rock band. From The Ages is their first studio album since the release of 2007's critically accled Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky. Earthless prides itself on creating energetic, free thinking instrumental music inspired by an eclectic mix of German Krautrock and Japanese heavy Blues-Rock. The Californian trio has dedicated itself to mastery of the mind-bending jam session, evoking the spirits of Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath in equal measure. Earthless' sound has been called ''A sonic kaleido of lava and lightning,'' earning it the title of ''California's loudest band.'' Review ------ 7.2 Earthless don't leave room for misinterpretation or error concerning their mission: They are a long-winded guitar trio, hell-bent on riding six electric strings directly out of this atmosphere. No sooner than the drums unload their initial heavy hit on the band's first album in six years the ridiculous ripper ''From the Ages'' Isaiah Mitchell takes his first solo, his squealing lead slashing cleanly through a vacant gaze of cymbal wash. The band soon digs back in, with drummer Mario Rubalcaba and bassist Mike Eginton instantly st a sturdy pocket. But it's Mitchell that almost always edges out front in Earthless. He rides through a riff and races off into tangents for minutes on end. After that lead burst during album opener ''Violence of the Red Sea,'' he bends a theme a half-dozen different ways, whether retracing his lead with a wah-wah moan here or a whammy bar battle with himself there. Rubalcaba and Eginton don't pull Mitchell back toward earth; they instead follow his ecstatic lead everywhere, fellow travelers on his odyssey of enthusiasms. Since Earthless' last album, 2007's ''Rhythms from a Cosmic Sky,'' its members have been busy: Rubacalba has been behind the throne for new old punks OFF! and out front for San Diego pounders Spider Fever. Mitchell joined Howlin Rain for its Rick Rubin-helmed catastrophe ''The Russian Wilds'' and started the blustery, concise psych group Golden Void with some high school buddies and his wife. Mitchell actually presaged Golden Void at the end of ''Rhythms'' with the swiveling Groundhogs cover ''Cherry Red'', the shortest bit of Earthless' oeuvre by a quarter-hour. The experience of getting back into bands playing discrete tunes serves ''From the Ages'' well, as Earthless breaks the album's hour-plus run time into four digestible tracks. ''Violence of the Red Sea'' syncs well with ''Uluru Rock'', a smoldering tune that's steadily fanned until it leaps into flames. ''Equus October'' indulges a cosmic drift, with the bass leading the Om-like way for circular drums and a twilit haze of electrostatic ambiance. It's an uncharacteristically subdued side of Earthless. As such, it only last five minutes. --Pitchfork ''To describe Earthless' music is a bit like describing a dream. In fact, there's nothing altogether straightforward about the band's sound except, well, that they f***ing rock. Yeah, let's go with that description: f***ing-rock.'' --San Diego CityBeat #8 20 Best Metal Albums of 2013 Despite their far-out band name, Earthless sound born of the Third Stone From the Sun on their third album, locking into Hendrix-inspired grooves and jamming out in a way that's both heavy and somehow separate from the lineage of Black Sabbath. The San Diego instrumental psych-rock trio achieves a groove-y state of mind on each of the album's four, epic-length songs. The 30-minute title track is a trip in itself, if not just for the way it moves from locomotive riffs to an exotic slow section, only to finish with a noisy, metal riff; it's one of the heftiest heavy jams recorded this year. --Rolling Stone, December 2013

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