If Red October has done one thing with their self-titled album, it's reintroducing a new world of Psychedelic Rock to Delaware's youngest DIY crowd. These prodigious shredders started covering King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard tunes as high schoolers, and their emergent college-age counterparts around Newark are all doing great work getting off the ground as well - there's more of this sound to come, for sure. Think of it this way - King Gizzard has, as with many other psych bands formed after 2010, admitted to the essential nature of Thee Oh Sees on their formation and sound. King Gizzard's Twelve Bar Bruise album sounds just like early Thee Oh Sees records, and Gizz have said so themselves. Sure, Gizz has reached a height where they pull in Phish Fans and Deadheads, but King Gizzard was always a sort of second coming of Oh Sees' psych sound. By my estimation. this puts bands like Red October, riding squarely on the Gizz wave, at the foot of the next tsunami. There should be zero doubt in your mind that Gizz-esque psych rock is going to blow up in the next few years.
Red October is exactly where I'd want to be if I were playing psychedelic rock right now. There's an improvisational edge to the material here, one that shows huge King Gizzard, Grateful Dead, and Hawkwind influence. It's spacey, it's earthy, it's a delicate balance of psych rock sounds in its entirety, floating back and forth between various transportive tones. Album opener "The Serpent" totes strong lead guitars, squishy and wah-pedal-laden, distinctly reminiscent of King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard's psych-jazz album Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms, Planets, and Lava - but not wholly derivative. Next up, "Big Walker Believes in Aliens" is hard proof Red October are more than capable of branching out from King Gizzard's massive umbrella of influence into The Strokes-esque indie rock or even something more surfy. Heck, "My Bud Westin" is more influenced by 90's rock than anything from the world of King Gizzard.
"A Pair of Eyes" returns to the eerie, jazzy side of things, more in line with the record's opener, carrying its moodier tone right into the heaviest track on the record, "Uninvited Stranger", which carries a strong scent of Primus influence. Before things get too directional after eight minutes of heavy psych jams, "You Wanted To Know?" skips back into sunny deadhead territory. It's worth noting that the bass on this track is phenomenal, carrying a string of ear-grabbing underlicks. "Practicing Patience" and "..before it fades" are the most Gizzard-styled tracks on the record, toting more spoken word passages backed up by strong instrumental tracks.
"The Wave" and "The Flood" are outright surf rock, with superb organ tones and guitar motifs reminiscent of greats like Dick Dale or The Beach Boys. The closer and title track, "Red October", while not mixed to match the full-frontal force of the song, is still a strong album closer in the right that it breaks from clear influences and does its own thing entirely, toting a clear blend of the various sounds from across the record that precedes it. The whole record is like watching the influences go through the blender in real time - it's like watching Red October land on their own sound, ten toes down, in real time. If these rippers reconvene after their first year of college, they will doubtlessly come through with a second batch of songs that we listeners can't even begin to predict the sound of. Red October's self-titled album is out on streaming services now via Wonderland Records - go give it a listen if you like psych rock in any flavor or type!
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