Royal Talons: Royal Talons EP

The Royal Talons’ debut EP is 46 minutes of mammoth psychedelic doom. Dosed with ample stoner rock atmospherics, and featuring plenty of lurching lysergic gyrations, the self-titled debut release from the Denver, Colorado trio melds the hypnotic pulse of OM and the mystical groove of Saturnalia Temple with the unvarnished, ripped-jeans, dirty-old-hometown appeal of Acid King.

It is all, in a word, riff-tastic. Comprising five epic tunes, the EP kicks off with the fittingly masticating bite of “Shark Skull”, runs through the bad-trip rumble of “The Scroll” and “Robot Cities”, before heading off into verdant pastures (albeit ones shadowed by very stormy clouds) on “D-Day Spell” and “Western Path”. It’s all exceptionally heavy, utterly mesmerising, and filled with glorious passages of fuzzy ambience being stomped upon by huge feedback-laden riffs.

The Royal Talons make great use of dynamics to shift from the spacious and ruminative to the dense and claustrophobic. And with vocals running from the soaring to the completely soured, there’s plenty of head nodding, feet shuffling, “whoa, man” moments to be found within. A great debut. Royal Talons are definitely a band to keep a bloodshot eye upon.