The back end of 2012 saw Italian stoner rock quartet Gandhi’s Gunn sign a worldwide two-album deal with US label Small Stone Records, as well as undergoing a name change to the infinitely less amusing Isaak.
The first of these albums comes in the shape of the remixed and remastered re-release of their 2012 full-length, The Longer The Beard, The Harder The Sound. Opener Haywire sets the album’s stall out straight away with its uptempo stomp – and so it goes on with tracks such as Breaking Balance and Rest Of The Sun all bringing much of the same standard stoner fare.
It’s with the album’s two longer tracks, however, that Isaak are altogether more successful. The doomy Flood and the sprawling 10-minute psychedelia-infused Hypothesis both give glimpses of what the band can achieve if they give their songs time to breathe. Four new tracks, including a cover of Pink Floyd’s Fearless and an awful rendition of Iron Maiden’s Wrathchild, round things out with an album that rarely rises above the mediocre.
