Bandcamp ABANAMAT are a Berlin quartet with passports from four countries, USA, Germany, Syria and Russia, and on their second album that internationalism shows up as a refusal to sit still in any one lane. Abominat is sold as heavy psych, and the desert-rock scene it comes from is real, but what actually fills these seven tracks is closer to a guitar journey: warm, largely instrumental heavy rock that leans on classic-metal harmony, neoclassical soloing and long, patient builds, with sparse vocals surfacing only when a song wants them. It is less about the riff as monument than about where the lead guitar can travel across a piece, which is exactly why the closing title track handing the reins to Earthless’ Isaiah Mitchell feels less like a guest spot than a statement of intent.
The sound is the easy pleasure here. Most of Abominat skips the modern brickwall entirely and breathes like a band tracked in a room: creamy, mid-forward overdrive with real note separation in the twin-guitar harmonies, an honest kick with punch instead of a clicked sample, a snare with actual wood in it, and cymbals that stay silky instead of turning sibilant. “Dream Of The Fishermans Wife” opens the record on that transparency, the lead guitar phrasing like a singer over a dry, defined bass, and “Blue Yonder” is the highlight, a lightly rough clean vocal sitting dead-center in the mix while the arrangement moves through picked verses, a shoving chorus and a solo that is worked out rather than just shredded. When the band trust that organic, analog warmth, the trip is genuinely lovely.
Two things keep it in good rather than essential territory. A couple of tracks break the spell on production alone: “Zugzwang” leans on triggered-sounding drums and an upper-mid-heavy master that fatigues, and the title track runs a harder bus compression that flattens its transients and stacks the 2 to 5 kHz band. And the guitar-first approach, dazzling as it is, occasionally tips from journey into noodle, the neoclassical runs impressive but not always going somewhere a song needs. This is comfort-zone virtuosity: warm, skilled, endlessly listenable, rarely surprising.
Abominat is a warm, guitar-drunk heavy-psych-into-prog record from a band who clearly love playing together and recorded it that way, and for anyone who came up on Earthless-style instrumental journeys and classic-metal lead work it is an easy, generous listen. Turn it up, follow the guitar, and do not expect it to knock you flat. It would rather take you somewhere.
Warm, largely instrumental heavy psych that leans on classic-metal harmony and neoclassical lead guitar, and the easy pleasure is a mostly un-brickwalled, tracked-in-a-room sound. Creamy mid-forward overdrive keeps real note separation in the twin-guitar harmonies, the kick has honest punch instead of a clicked sample, and the cymbals stay silky rather than sibilant; “Dream Of The Fishermans Wife” and the highlight “Blue Yonder” ride that transparency, the lead guitar phrasing like a singer over a dry, defined bass. The reservations are two tracks and a tendency: “Zugzwang” leans on triggered-sounding drums and an upper-mid-heavy master that fatigues, the title track runs harder bus compression that flattens transients and stacks the 2 to 5 kHz band, and the guitar-first writing occasionally tips from journey into noodle. Organic and generous at its best, comfort-zone virtuosity at its most ordinary.
Standout tracks: Blue Yonder, Dream Of The Fishermans Wife, Fossil Eyes
