'caucus' Beyond Intractability

San Francisco's Beyond-O-Matic plays a dreamy, sometimes quirky, electronically psychedelic brand of space music that has just enough freakiness, and even a fair dose of dissonance, to put it firmly in the space realm, but is somewhat undefinable in it's interpretation. The band consists of Kurt Stenzel (aka Stenzo) on vocals, keyboards, guitar, and delay loops, Franktus Evictus on drums and voices, David Gresalfi on linndrum, samples, and vocals, and the Reverend Peter Fuhry on vocals, cross5 guitar, thebeatles, acoustic bariguitar, long stiff finger off doom, toy piano, accordion, flute, metal clarinet, and delay loop effects. What's that? You've never heard of a thebeatles? Or a long stiff finger of doom?

The German symphonic metal band Beyond the Black return with their fifth full length record, the self-titled Beyond the Black. German Symphonic Metal shooting stars Beyond the Black look back on a stratospheric success story. Already their 2015 debut album hit like a bomb in their home country. Songs Of Love And Death besieged the German Top 15 for weeks and lead up to the band being awarded the Metal Hammer Award 2015 for "Best Debut". It's successor Lost In Forever (2016) entered the German charts on #4 right away and paved ways for a huge tour from Germany over countries like UK, Russia or Japan. Since the band's live debut in 2014 they have played the world's biggest Metal festival Wacken Open Air several times and toured as a support act for heavyweights such as Aerosmith, Korn, Scorpions, Saxon or Within Temptation.

Captain Beyond is a one-of-a-kind progressive album with rock, heavy metal, and jazz influences with a "space rock" lyrical bend. Formed by former members of Deep Purple (Rod Evans, vocals), Iron Butterfly (Rhino, lead guitar, and Lee Dorman, bass), and Johnny Winter (Bobby Caldwell, drums) Captain Beyond is an album that flows from riff to riff, drumbeat to drumbeat, often with various time signatures within the same song. Taking a tip from the Moody Blues, songs flow directly into each other without benefit of any lag time between selections. Taken as a whole, the album is kind of a rush, as quick, riff-laden guitar lines predominate for a few songs before slowing down temporarily into a lull until the next takeoff.