Superinertia. 10.000 Russos

There are albums and there experiences. Superintertia is such an album. 10.000 Russos drags itself and me, as listener, through the quagmire of its music despite the sucking forces at our feet. Swaths of mosquitoes attack us along the way, the heat sweltering. We are dragging our feet, boots long lost, swatting the stinging insects away and continuously mopping our brows from dirt and sweat. And yet we progress, because we simply have to.

Superinertia is that kind of album. The sleaze and the dirt of the darkest psychedelia is all present. A wall of sound comes at me. My ears working hard to connect with individual instruments, let alone the vocal melody. The softer song, 'A House Full Of Garbage', excepting, this is hard, aural work. 10.000 Russos are not much for subtlety, although work hard and one may find a little hidden in the wall of sound.

Coming from Porto in Portugal, 10.000 Russos releases its fourth album since 2013 with Superinertia. With the album comes a European tour taking it through several countries. It is the sort of band the psychedelic underground scene is in wait of. And I can totally relate to the why.

This is not music the average person listens to and perhaps does not even know it exists. Simply because it's never played on commercial radio. Fans however, hear the layers of sounds the band creates while building its songs. The final song 'Mexicali/Calexico' is the perfect example how the sound is built and built further. The guitar is shredded to pieces by Pedro Pestana but only to a level that it is still possible to hear what else is going on. Extreme only to a certain limit. Synthesizer player Nils Meisel adds another level to the music, creating a huge sound behind the layers of guitars. Underneath it all relentless drumming takes place, filling all the little holes in the music that may have been left behind by the other two (which I doubt even). The drumming will make listeners go into a trance, as it's the heartbeat of these songs.

Singer, and drummer, João Pimenta, is left to his own devices to get over it all. This is perhaps the only complaint to Superinertia. The singing. Pimenta can sing as he shows in the softer song just mentioned. He doesn't really get the chance in the inferno going on around him. This complaint goes for most of this genre in my opinion. Singing seems to be the left over element, Oh, yes, singing, while singing is often the great connector. Although this might be different for the average psychedelic rocker.

Superinertia rocks hard, harder, hardest.

Wout de Natris