Kadavar: Berlin

If it ain’t stiff, it ain’t worth a fick.

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This is how you open an album. Like Sabbath covering The Stooges’ TV Eye, Lord Of The Sky is a sideburn-grabbing call to action from bristly German trio Kadavar.

Although they barely come out of the red for the superb stoner fuzz stomp Last Living Dinosaur, Berlin is Kadavar 2.0; cleaner, more inventive production, broader palette (although still 70s-centred), stratospheric energy. And if you want hooks, they got ’em – Christoph Lindemann’s psychedelic riffola has been drop-kicked by the pithy groove of new bassist Simon Bouteloup, with welcome preposterous results (Stolen Dreams is just ridiculous).

Songcraft has leapt on apace, too, with linear rock progressions ditched in favour of folk-rock pomp on Old Man, MC5 rowdiness on Filthy Illusion, and heavy psych bluster on Into The Night. See The World With Your Own Eyes might even be the best post-SF Sorrow Pretty Things song the Pretties never wrote.

If you’re planning a city break, Berlin is worth the trip.

Classic Rock 215: New Albums H-Z

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Jo Kendall
Jo Kendall

Jo is a journalist, podcaster, event host and music industry lecturer with 23 years in music magazines since joining Kerrang! as office manager in 1999. But before that Jo had 10 years as a London-based gig promoter and DJ, also working in various vintage record shops and for the UK arm of the Sub Pop label as a warehouse and press assistant. Jo's had tea with Robert Fripp, touched Ian Anderson's favourite flute (!), asked Suzi Quatro what one wears under a leather catsuit, and invented several ridiculous editorial ideas such as the regular celebrity cooking column for Prog, Supper's Ready. After being Deputy Editor for Prog for five years and Managing Editor of Classic Rock for three, Jo is now Associate Editor of Prog, where she's been since its inception in 2009, and a regular contributor to Classic Rock. She continues to spread the experimental and psychedelic music-based word amid unsuspecting students at BIMM Institute London, hoping to inspire the next gen of rock, metal, prog and indie creators and appreciators.