The band’s name features the buzz word “zombie” and hails from New York, but don’t write Manual Zombie off. This is fresh. Mixing the instrumentation of traditional psychedelia with homemade gadgets – everything from samplers to the buzzing of television tubes – Manual Zombie pulls you by the headphone tech down into a celestial swamp and lets you hang uncomfortably. Ice From the Sun is nasty, delicious, shifty, possibly completely improvised psych that lays the fuzz on thick and keeps the vocals to a grumble or a growl, like Dead Meadow after seeing some shit that can’t be unseen (czech “Automatic People,” not to be confused with Automatic For the People, hombre). You even hear a little punk and surf in the record’s mid-section by way of “Slave.” And just when you think you’ve ingested the doctor’s recommended dosage, Manual Zombie totally switches it up on the cascading and beautiful “Justifying to God.” If The Outer Limits was reincarnated on television, I vote for “Woods Off Of Interstate 55″ to be the theme song.
In short, Manual Zombie feels like Swans at their least Satanic, Bardo Pond at their grooviest, and Hawkwind bummin’ hard on some downers. Do not sleep on this! Go see about them at their Interwebz place or on MySpazz (the latter features a number of awesome posters like the one above).
For fans of: Swans, Bardo Pond, Acid Mothers Temple, Plastic Crimewave Sound
MP3 :::
Manual Zombie – Automatic People
Manual Zombie – Justifying to God
Manual Zombie – Woods Off Of Interstate 55
