Photo courtesy of the artist
There are two basic things a successful band name should accomplish: 1) It should give you some semblance of an idea of what a band might sound like, and 2) it should be unforgettable. While admittedly the Lucifer/guitar-pedal pun trope is a tired one—and tends to evoke an image of dad-rockers who spent far more cash on their full-stacks than they ever did on guitar lessons—the idea of aligning a band’s name with an identifiable genre sound in the era of seeing a band’s image on the Internet before even hearing a single note it is genius. When four dudes from Maryland just about blasted through their walls with the vibrations of their heavy riffs, slapping a name like “Beelzefuzz” over their work was not just an apt description of a heavy metal band that employs the use of fuzzy guitar tones, it was an acceptance of a challenge to use their sound rather than their name to cut through modern stoner rock’s clutter. And today, it’s obvious that it worked.
Indeed, Beelzefuzz have come forth with The Righteous Room (out today on Restricted Release Records and The Church Within), an album that pushes the confines of the foundations laid down by Kyuss, Fu Manchu, and the like and enters more mystical, groovy territory. Citing influences like Robert W. Chambers and Lovecraft alongside Tony Iommi, these guys have made a thinking-person’s record that could conceivably find itself in the hands of a greying hippy in a Rush shirt just as easily as a kid with a Sleep skateboard.
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If you’re a fan of heavy, riffy rock’n’roll, but long for more wonder and complexity than the current state of affairs has to offer, this one’s for you. And chances are, you’ll never forget that name.
Cat Jones is rocking and rolling on Twitter.
