Twin Wizard – Interview with Anthony Dreyer and Brad Van

If powerful and fuzzy stoner rock is your thing, then two-piece band Twin Wizard are definitely a band you need to check out immediately. Formed by members of Droids Attack and Telekinetic Yeti, the duo have just released their debut album ‘Glacial Gods’ which is getting rave reviews, so Riff Lords caught with the band to know more about it.

Congratulations ‘Glacial Gods’ is an excellent release and I believe it will keep fans of your other two bands very happy! What has been the reaction to the album so far? I take it's mostly positive right?

Brad - Yes, it's been very positive. It seems like there has been some anticipation since we announced we were working together and getting ready to release it months ago.

Anthony - Thank you! I hope everyone enjoys the record as much as we have creating it. It was a long road getting to this point but I couldn't be happier with the positive responses and support we've received so far.

So Brad Van plays in Droids Attack and Anthony Dreyer in Telekinetic Yeti, tell us a bit how the two of you started out and what styles of music you were playing and developing at the time?

Brad - Droids played with Yeti a bunch of times over the years back when they were starting out. They invited us to play some shows, we invited them and we all just became pretty good friends, really. There was certainly a mutual respect for each other's work and from there the friendship just came naturally. Our band's styles complimented each other pretty well too. Very heavy, riff and rhythm oriented.

Anthony - Back when I was a member of Yeti we had the opportunity to play with Droids often over the years. We just clicked really well with them and I've always been a huge fan of Droids and loved their records and live shows. Everything just feels organic and natural working with Brad. We are both very percussive players and I think it really comes out in the big chunky riffs and heavy grooves. We are also both multi-instrumentalists and it makes writing music easy and direct especially as a duo.

Satyrus - Rites

Italians Satyrus bring an aura of darkness and occultism to a rather heavy and groovy doom rock on their debut album "Rites". The band straddle the fine line between the heavy doom of Black Sabbath and the occult rock of someone like Danzig throughout these five tracks, merging some mammoth-sized riffing with a nice melodic grit. It's on tracks like "Stigma" that Satyrus reveal this mastery by offering some catchy and groovy riffs that has the warm familiarity of Toni Iommi.

Hell Obelisco - Cyclopian

Italian sludge rockers Hell Obelisco are back with a new EP featuring  five brand new songs, including a cover of ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man” and their mission is practically the same, to churn out some sludgy and heavy riffs, infectious rhythms and raspy vocals. That's exactly what you get on this new EP, mammoth-sized, swampy and distorted riffs that will make your head bang, groovy rhythms that will make you boogie and some whiskey-drenched vocals that complements everything quite nicely.

Dope Smoker - Vol​.​4

“Vol. 4”, as the title suggests is the fourth album from Dope Smoker, a Wales-based three-piece group that plays a blend of doom, stoner, sludge, psychedelic rock and a few other subgenres involving distortion pedals.

Let me just point out that this is their fourth album released in just two years, so basically they have been releasing a new album every six months, which is something that might explain why “Vol. 4” is just a weak and uninteresting collection of songs based around rudimentary riffs. Perhaps it would it more advantageous for Dope Smoker to invest more time on the songwriting and maybe release a new effort once a year or every two years than just record every riff and ideas and came up at the rehearsal room without much care for arrangements or details.

Godsleep - Thousand Sons Of Sleep

Could Greece be the new California? During the last few years I’ve discovered a great number of stoner rock groups from this country and I confess I was truly amazed by the quality and groove of some of these artists like 100Moods, Planet Zeus and Craang just to name a few.

We can now add Godsleep, an Athens-based quartet, to that growing list. Not only their debut “Thousand Sons Of Sleep” displays a stunningly groovy and infectious combination of sludge, stoner and psychedelic-rock, it sounds as if it was forged in the heart of New Orleans or Palm Desert such is the influence that bands like Down, Crowbar and Kyuss have over the Greeks. They surely made no effort to camouflage their influences and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially if we’re talking about stoner rock and we know that everything circles back to Black Sabbath, it’s inevitable.