Sun And Sail Club, a stoner-meets-punk band from Southern California, will be releasing their second full-length album ‘The Great White Dope’ via Satin Records Recording in May.
Stoner rock/metal followers are familiarized with Sun And Sail Club members. Coming from pioneers of the modern take on stoner rock Fu Manchu and Kyuss, this band bring to the table a very beefy sound right from the 60’s and 70’s with a new pitch to make it more interesting. After their formation back in 2011 with Bob Balch (Fu Manchu), Scott Thomas Reeder (Kyuss) and Scott Reeder (Fu Manchu), Sun And Sail Club released their debut album ‘Mannequin’. In this album, vocals were recorded with a vocoder along the guitar riffs, which gave the whole album a feel of stoner meets progressive vocals from the 70’s.
[blockquote cite=”Bob Balch”]On the last record, ‘Mannequin’, I recorded all the vocals using my guitar and a vocoder. I’m a big fan on Krafterwerk and Black Moth Super Rainbow and that album reflects that 100%.[/blockquote]
For ‘The Great White Dope’, Sun And Sail Club decided to take a different direction regarding vocals by recruiting The Adolescents vocalist Tony Adolescent. With a punk vocalist/lyricist, the sound acquired in this sophomore album gains a lot of thickness, which you can hear in the couple of teaser videos posted below. The recruitment of Tony Adolescent, not only gave another tone to the composition, but it actually boosted the composition process for Bob Balch.
[blockquote cite=”Bob Balch”]I had a few riffs floating around, [but] nowhere near a full record. I contacted Tony and he agreed to sing on the record. He hadn’t even heard one note! Once I read that response, I was super pumped and wrote almost the entire record in three hours with his vocals in mind. The end result is a record that is super inspired and aggressive with songs that get right to the point … I always wanted to make a record that was punk influenced with big drums and fuzzy guitars. Like, what if the Bad Brains had to play a set on Fu Manchu’s gear? … I sent the tunes to Reeder [drummer] and then drove up to Orange County to demo them. We jammed once and then we were in the studio the following week to track drums and rhythm guitars. We went with our buddy Andrew Giacumakis’ studio. He plays in a band named MOAB and we love the tones he gets. He recorded drums and bass on the last Fu Manchu record, ‘Gigantoid’, as well. From there, I went to ‘The Racket Room’ to get some vocals with Tony Adolescent and Jim Monroe at the board. Jim recorded guitars on the last Fu Manchu record and recorded The Adolescents a bunch of times, so that decision made perfect sense. Then I headed out to the desert to record leads and bass at Scott Reeder’s ‘Sanctuary.’ It was always my intention and always will be my intention to record there. Not only because Reeder gets the best guitar, bass and drum tones. [/blockquote]
‘The Great White Dope’ will mark the way Sun And Sail Club approach to a new kind of sound. This album will be released sometime in May.
- ‘Krokodil Dental Plan’
- ‘Dresden Fireball Freakout Flight’
- ‘Baba Yaga Bastard Patrol’
- ‘Migraine With A Chainsaw Reduction’
- ‘Level Up & Shut It Down’
- ‘Fever Blister & The Great White Dope’
- ‘Full Tilt Panic’
- ‘Alien Rant Factory’
- ‘Inside Traitor Outside View’
- ‘Cypherpunk Roulette’
Personally, I’m looking forward to hear the entire album. The teasers really fulfil their purpose, with that heavy, thick riffs and the chance to hear real vocals in a Sun And Sail Club album. Let’s see if he album matches the expectation the teasers have created.
