The Mirror Explodes

Where the band's last long player HEAVY DEAVY SKULL LOVER tweaked time in an icy-cool, white noise swirl that evoked a decadent lysergic night, this effort is disorientation through a longer lens pictures of luck, longing, losing, moods and fever dreams scrambled in the haze of near and distant memory. The Warlock's signature amalgam of WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT attack, space panoramas, fuzz, melancholy, and melody is present and potent, but there's vivid focus too. Throbbing bass lines, distant rolling thunder drums, and zombie rattlesnake shake are a heartbeat of strange, ominous vitality. Guitars howl, slash, and bounce like light. The vocals sound oddly alone and unsettlingly intimate all at once. And just when you think you understand the sum of these sonic elements, they become something else entirely.