Dimensions - EP

Album Review

Wolfmother, Sydney, Australia's exported power trio, have been making lots of waves down under and in the United Kingdom. The four-track Dimensions EP is the band's first American issue, as a test before the release of its debut self-titled long-player recorded in Los Angeles. Wolfmother — Andrew Stockdale, guitar and vocals; Chris Ross, organ and bass; and drummer Myles Heskett — have been simultaneously celebrated and decried for their unabashed aping of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Dimensions contains four tracks. The title cut is the first single and its riffage is indeed mucky, dirty, and saturated in the very 'eavy rock clichés of yore. Over stomping, fuzz-thudding Geezer Butler-style bass and the screaming arpeggios of a Gibson SG, Stockdale's voice sounds like a dead cross between Robert Plant and Ozzy Osbourne — and his lyrics are just plain bad. The manic, muddy drumming adds the final topping on this sludge cake. The video of this cut offers faux live footage. "Mind's Eye," with its swirling distorted organ and snail's pace, echoes both Zep and Atom Heart Mother-era Pink Floyd — the video of the track directly copies scenes from Floyd's Live at Pompeii film. The keyboard break sounds like something from the Who's Tommy, no less! "Love Train" uses the Who's "Magic Bus" percussion break in its opening before erupting in a fuzzed-out bass-and-drum shakedown that ass-shimmies in a funky Zep ZOSO groove à la "Black Dog," with a Tony Iommi guitar break. Finally, "The Earth's Rotation Around the Sun" trots the Floyd back out and actually cops part of the Allman Brothers' "Whipping Post" riff that alternates with a noodling "improv" section for an oh-so-interstellar space wank, all inside of three minutes. Does Dimensions sound derivative and awful? It is. But this hardly means it doesn't deliver. It rocks, rolls, and thunders in all the right spots. If power trio mimicry is your thang, then Dimensions is the ticket. One does wonder if an entire album of this stuff will hold muster, but that's another story.