New Rituals

Album Review

It sounds like the five members of Iowa rock band Mondo Drag have spent a lot of time flipping through old LPs in local record stores, fishing out vinyl from late-‘60s performers like the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Blue Cheer, then investigating how to replicate the guitar effects on those records. They may have worn out copies of the original Nuggets collection, too. The result on their debut album, New Rituals, is a set of tracks with the heavy feel of the hard rock of 1968. True to the eclecticism of that era, Mondo Drag throw in slower tempos here and there and even break out acoustic guitars for songs like "Come Through" and "Black River." But they don't necessarily stay with one tempo or set of chords throughout an entire track, sometimes shifting abruptly to something else, as when the slow closer "Tallest Tales" suddenly changes gears for a faster, harder coda to end the disc. One big difference between Mondo Drag's influences and their own performances is that the band de-emphasizes vocals, which, when they are there at all, are low in the mix and distorted. Large sections of New Rituals are instrumental, making this a psychedelic experience given over to guitar textures and spacy soundscapes.