Bandcamp There is no false advertising on this record. It is called Hedonistic Hard Rock, the cover is five grinning Oslo lads piled face-up with the band name spelled in white powder across them, and the tracklist runs from “One Hundred Million Billion Beers” to “Outer Space Freebase” to “Wizard of Ozlo.” Bong Voyage are not here to reinvent anything, and thank god for that. This is a debut built for a Friday night, all riffs and beers and cosmic nonsense, and taken in that spirit it mostly rips.
When the band leans on its vintage, live-room instincts, the album is a blast. The opener “Saturday Rite Special” nails the formula, a dry, mid-forward garage sound that plays scrappy clean verses hard against fuzzed-out choruses, its master left dynamic enough that the contrast actually lands. “In Possession” closes on the same earthy, raw crunch, guitars dirty and rhythm-tight, and when Bong Voyage let the amps breathe like this they sound like the best kind of bar band, loose, loud and completely unbothered.
The problem is that too much of the middle chases modern loudness instead. “UFOria” and “Escape Prison Planet Earth” are mastered so hot and so compressed that they turn into a constant, fatiguing wall, the low end drained of warmth, the high mids sibilant and harsh, and a couple of the synth-heavy tracks (“Enabler,” “Wizard of Ozlo”) clog up in the low mids until the guitars lose their bite. For a record whose whole appeal is raw, sweaty, in-the-room energy, the brickwalled passages are self-defeating: they take the very looseness that makes the good songs fun and iron it flat.
Hedonistic Hard Rock is a fun, unpretentious, riff-first debut that knows exactly what it is and doesn’t pretend otherwise, and when it trusts its live-and-dirty instincts it delivers the good-time goods. A lighter, more consistent hand on the master would have let that party run all night; as it is, it is a rowdy, likeable record best cranked loud, with the more squashed tracks forgiven as the price of the beers. Bong Voyage, indeed.
Loud, unserious Oslo party rock that delivers exactly what the title promises. At its best it leans on vintage live-room instincts: the opener “Saturday Rite Special” nails a dry, mid-forward garage sound playing scrappy clean verses against fuzzed-out choruses with the master dynamic enough for the contrast to land, and the closer “In Possession” rides the same earthy, raw crunch, dirty and rhythm-tight. The weakness is the loudness-war master on the middle stretch: “UFOria” and “Escape Prison Planet Earth” are compressed so hot they turn into a constant, fatiguing wall, low end drained of warmth and high mids sibilant, and synth-heavy tracks like “Enabler” and “Wizard of Ozlo” clog in the low mids until the guitars lose their bite. Self-defeating for a record whose appeal is raw in-the-room energy. Rowdy and likeable when it stays loose, ironed flat when it chases volume.
Standout tracks: Saturday Rite Special, In Possession, Large And In Charge
