Jan-Simon: White Stripes, White Hills, White Zombie, Black Sabbath, Orange Goblin

White Orange - White Orange
Self-financed

file under stoner

Jan-Simon: White Stripes, White Hills, White Zombie, Black Sabbath, Orange Goblin… As if we do not have enough there is now White Orange and it would be too simple to just say that White Orange is a new colour based on the above ingredients. Of course there are traces of Sabbath to be heard, but that is quite normal for a band listing Nebula, The Sword and Kyuss as some of its reference points. Still it is not just stoner. White Orange puts a lot of nineties indiegrunge (like Smashing Pumpkins, Mudhoney, Nirvana) in its rock and refers in an original way to spacerock. Between all noisy guitar lines and wahwah explosions we hear the call “to set the controls for the heart of the sun”.

This somewhat strange mix is what makes White Orange so catchy. The great nonsensical and yet profound lyrics (“Sometimes less is more”) combined with guitars that are at one moment staccato and repetitive and the other complete freakout wah-wah weirdness are unusual, but are delivered with a naturalness as if there has never been anything else. As if time and space have warped in an inexplicable way to have all alternative guitar music of the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties converge into one spot. At that crossroads we find White Orange, hurling an endless flow of monster riffs into the atmosphere like an Icelandic volcano.

After a enervating riff-o-rama the final track ‘Sigourney Weaver’ is a welcome closer. Laid back and full of psychedelic distortion the album flows towards its end. No weak finish but a pleasant warm shower after an intense dive into the mind-expanding world of White Orange.
Rating: 85/100 (details)
http://www.myspace.com/whiteorangeband

http://www.lordsofmetal.nl/showreview.php?id=19437&lang=en