Moonshine Booze – Pandemonio

By RingMaster Review on March 1, 2021 • ( 0 )

Welcome to Pandemonio, the new album from Italian rockers Moonshine Booze. It is a release which fuels the sense of adventure we all nurture inside with its alternative rock heart within an eclectic landscape of sound and an encounter which gives ears a highly refreshing and enjoyable time.

Moonshine Booze emerged from Teramo in 2014, uniting the creative experiences and imaginations of vocalist Andrea Manila, guitarist Emiliano Zapata, and drummer Fabio Manchos. The trio proceeded to cast a sound which has increasingly became more inventive and fascinating as they embraced flavour upon flavour to its blues, country and alt rock sculpted breast. The band’s debut album of 2018, Desert Road, revealed it as a magnetic mix and drew keen attention but was just the seeding to the craft and adventure fertility of the richly multifaceted Pandemonio.

To that core mix of sound mentioned there are also strong open veins of psych and spaghetti-rock with more besides to create its alluring character and creative voice with album opener, The Hole, keenly unveiling the temptation it bears. The song strolls in with swinging rhythms and an intoxicating fuzz to its grooved coaxing, it all settling into an infectious stroll as Manila’s just as magnetic tones unveil the heart of the encounter. The web of flavours making up its body are as lively and adventurous, as too a sense of drama which escalates towards its closing sample which sets up the individual theatre of its successor.

Like its predecessor, the second track, Too Many Questions, has a classic rock breeding to its controlled but spirited canter but one soon wrapped in an array of varied flavours, each with a psych rock lining. Again, there is great unpredictability at play which never throws the song out of its contagious stride but makes every twist and turn a stranger to expectation before making way for The Tide whose darkly lit entrance alone leads ears and the imagination into a web of dark intrigue and intoxicant seduction.

Striding in with its rhythmic hips swinging and sonic enticement aflame, What If instantly had ears and body embroiled in its contagion, again Manila’s vocals as manipulative to participation as his band mates. Almost teasing with its ebb and flow in energy, the track was swiftly under the skin working its addictive virulence while Crazy Again took ears to the smoky salon of intimation. Folk and country hues merge within the song’s boozy, Mediterranean kissed saunter, a gypsy tinge additionally colouring its creative tale. The pair centres our favourite part of the album which is swiftly enlarged by the woozy jaunt of Trouble Man, a track taking familiar blues threads and weaving them into its own distinct personality drenched stroll.

Both The Spoiled Princess and Ponderosa keep ears deep in western nurtured climes whilst venturing broader landscapes. The first fuses blues and classic rock threads into an edaciously swinging temptation while the second aligns acoustic and mariachi seeded enthralment into another richly individual slice of rock devilment proving hard to tear ears away from.

Through the blues pickled Seeing Me In Trouble and the schizo scented theatre of the album’s title track, an instrumental which had the imagination dancing, Pandemonio only escalated its hold with in turn, the funk blues cultured Right The Ship Jack holding a firm grip on attention if without quite lighting the passions as its predecessors. Even so there was no stopping the body’s urge to move or an appetite to go again before the likes of the spatial leaning instrumental Beyond The Moonlight and Keep On Turning, with its crepuscular psychedelic blues scented atmosphere, sprung their own as potent lures.

The final pair of Little Love and Pulse brings the release to a riveting close, the former another wrapped in tantalising shadows as a dextrous mix of sounds tempts forging another major highlight of Pandemonio with the last, a collage of percussion and rhythmic orchestration woven into a fluid and compelling incitement.

It is a fine end to a superb encounter which has only grown more addictive by the listen. A few times there is something of a Billy Momo meets The Filthy Tongues meets Dark Hound air to Pandemonio but it quickly and firmly proves a unique adventure with Moonshine Booze which we can only lustily recommend.

Pandemonio is out now via Overdub Recordings; available @ https://moonshinebooze.bandcamp.com/album/pandemonio-2