Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats

After the album's release, the band's lineup shifted again, with Vaughn Stokes joining on second guitar. Subtract the Rubinger brothers, add Jon Rice on drums, and this is the trio that headed to the legendary Sunset Studio in L.A. to record their fifth album. With the help of engineer Geoff Neal and the same echo chamber Van Halen used in the '70s, the band laid down basic tracks before Starrs took the music home to Cambridge to finish in his home studio. As with many albums released in the late 2010s, 2018's Wasteland was a politically charged and dystopian album, in this case fueled by Starrs' massive guitars and the lo-fi, Sabbath-in-a-tin-can punch of the band. Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats toured behind the album until such activities were put on hold in early 2020, then headed back out in 2022. A selection of the band's material culled from two shows recorded in Minneapolis in 2019 and 2022 were released in 2023 under the title Slaughter on First Avenue. During this time, Starrs had an idea for an instrumental album, then scrapped it to undertake something very different from anything the group had done before. Inspired by his love of Italian cinema from the '70s, Starrs wrote a script for a film and then set about writing music to fit the words. Recording mainly by himself and utilizing Italian actors to do voice-overs, the resulting Nell' Ora Blu album was a huge left turn. While there were moments when the album provided some of the metallic crunch the band had cultivated in the past, there were also moody instrumental passages complete with piano, murky prog-rock explorations, portentous synthesizer pieces, and swirling psychedelic rockers, all with actors intoning the script over the top. It was released in May of 2024 with Starrs mulling over the possibilities of being able to play the album live. ~ Gregory Heaney & Tim Sendra, Rovi

From 🇬🇧 United Kingdom