Band : The Grand Astoria
Album title : II
Label : RAIG
Distributor : /
Release date : 2010
Review : CD

The Grand Astoria is a four-piece, twin guitar rock band from Saint Petersburg. Their music is fuzzy, groovy and ‘70s inspired. Yet, sometimes it allows itself the pleasure of a good psych hook, or a catchy punk melody TGA’s second studio album is basically an all-instrumental effort: except of one song with a nice title “The Intergalactic Experience Between Emily Dickinson And Sylvia Plath”.

No, bandleader Kamille Sharapodinov (guitars, vocals), Igor Suvorov (guitars), Farid Azizov (bass) and Nick Kunavin  (drums) are not part of the plague of uninspired Sabbath and Zeppelin imitators. Mercifully, they're a powerhouse of a band with a fantastic sense of dynamics and certainly worth a listen. Of the five tracks “Wikipedia Surfer” is probably my favourite because it fuses all of the band's best qualities into one condensed and intense guitar-fest of a song. On the more Psych Stoner-ish front, the band gets down to business on the 10-minute epics “Enjoy The View” and “Radio Friendly Fire” which demonstrates the band’s melodic guitar harmonies and groove-based power, and it includes some great solo turns as well as spacey mellow/loud shifts.

85/100

Cosmicmasseur.