Wormwood; Cracked Machine’s New Album

A third instalment of space rock swirls and cosmic heavy duty guitar riffs was unleashed in January from our homegrown purveyors of psychedelia, Cracked Machine. Plug in and prepare for takeoff, Wormwood continues on their already stunning discography of celestial shenanigans….

Pretty much where we left off with the Gates of Keras, Wormwood offers that prog-rock gorgeousness, as beefy as Bovril on the boil, heavy-laden guitar riffs beguiling the stoner or non-stoner alike; you need not skin up to be immersed in this. Pink Floyd’s moments of drifting ambience, meets contemporary likes of the Ozric Tentacles here, it’s a trip more than an album, flowing from track to track and taking you along for a ride of euphoria and headbanging moments, in equal measure. Someone, pass me a lava lamp, pronto.

All instrumental, and mentally metal, gorge yourself stupid, encased in its epic journeys. By its very flowing nature, it makes it tricky to say much more as a way of review, I found the summit track, Eigenstate particularly ‘aving it, and when it falls into eight minutes of Return to Anatres, you’re drifting back through clouds of guitar riffs as solid as tungsten. Yet, if space-rock as a subgenre has welded into the likes of Spiritized or Spaceman 3, Cracked Machine are more likeable to Hawkwind, which in my most humblest of opinions is no bad thing. Wormwood doesn’t go on whim of experimentation or try to slide anything unexpected into it, it just ripples along a course like a stream. Although intros like that of Desert Haze can cause you to assume things are going to get all trancy-techno, it doesn’t stop at that riverbank.

You may have caught them down the Gate for their album release show, I was gutted to have had to miss it. You may have seen them before, such as the year Vinyl Realm hosted a stage at Devizes Street Festival and all took flight from the Market Place to erect deckchairs at St John’s and lie in mega bliss. Such is the accomplished Cracked Machine, forging space-rock into a new era, yet not forgetting its rich history. Put this on and be submerged.

Here’s their LinkTree, fill your boots, open your third eye…..