Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Parais — The Ripper at the Heavens Gates of Dark
The album features five tracks in all with two epic twenty minute tracks, a fifteen & a twelve minute track and one four minute track. The album starts in fairly high rocking & fairly conventional (by ATM standards) form with “Chinese Flying Saucer”, which finds the band churning out a great copy of a Led Zeppelin riff, with the bands singer warbling out this great over the top but slightly oriental tinged impression of Robert Plants legendary rock wail. By around the fifth minute of this twelve minute track things start to turn more ATM like with a dense ‘n’ slowing jammed-out mixture of wailing guitars, descending bass line, spacey synth trails, vocal wails ‘n’ mumbles, ect- this carries on until around just after the tenth minute when the Led zep riff kicks back in again.
Track number three “Back Door Man Of Ghost Rails Inn” finds ATM starting out mix-up a more wondering ‘n’ twanging take of The Doors epic “The End”- with regal yet doomy organ rolls meeting twanging almost sitar sounding guitar work. On top of this the ATM’s singer does a great yet wondering and fairly indecipherable take on Jim Morrison mystical vocal struts ‘n’ moans. Again around about 7th or 8th minutes the track starts to turn more ATM like, with the trademark space synth wailing 'n' swooping through the track, along with a more jammed out vibe- yet it still stays with that Doors vibe with the Mock Morrison vocals, the organ plod & the epic twanging guitar lines.
The last two track places are taken up by the albums two longest tracks- "Shine on You Crazy Dynamite"(21:57 ) and Electric Death Mantra(19:22). “Shine on You Crazy Dynamite” mixes a churning early Pink Floyd organ heavy jam out vibe with throbbing space punk rock builds, warbling ‘n’ stoned male vocals, and drifts into almost ATM spaced –out American Indian tinged slow space rock-outs. “Electric Death Mantra” starts with unfurling of stoned twanging guitar that sets out the eastern tinged 60’s space rock riff path, added to this are subtle weaves & pitchers of space synth, and mumble/chanted mantra like vocals. As the track goes on it slowly builds up with ATM adding in layers of guitar- both soloing & for more eastern textural depth, more chanting, a nice lose but galloping beat/ groove, and of course more space synth. At the tracks height one can almost picture psychedelic & kaleidoscopic footage of multiple belly dances twisting and swaying in thick clouds of hash smoke.
All told another fairly sound & rewarding ATM record, not one of their best, but equally not one of their worst- of interest to fans ATM’s past work & those who fancy a rather wonky yet spacey trip down late 1960’s rock paths.