Godchillar are OGs of the Icelandic music scene. Their first album, COSMATOS, came out a decade ago, and they got a cool write-up by VICE a year later in 2016, back when VICE was both still relevant and tuned into the underground. I know I caught them live at least once during a past Iceland Airwaves and had a great time at their show. So when I heard they were putting out their first album since 2017, I immediately put it on my “must buy” list for our recent trip to Reykjavik.
The sludge oozes from my speakers right from the start of the opening track, “Donksmonker”, a viscous flash flood of brown notes overwhelming me, filling my ears and mouth and threatening to suffocate me with its pulsing, unrelenting pressure. So, so good. The second track, “I Love You”, overlays this bubbling tar pool with doom riffs and siren-like feedback, the weight of which makes it impossible to keep my nose above the surface. All that I can do is allow myself to sink into it, let it consume me, mind, body, and spirit, dragging me toward the bottom. When “Holiday Club” comes along Godchilla inject the whole thing with a huge dose of surf sensibility, and now I’m back to the surface, riding a roiling wave of sludge on a broken guitar neck. I might just survive after all. The closer, the 12-minute-long “Falling”, is a sonic masterclass, trippy-ass drone with a rad stuttering effect in parts that for a brief second had me thinking the record skipped, only to realize the guys were blowing my mind with something I’ve never heard before on a rock record. Talk about ending on a high note.
Psionic Dreams weaves in and out of various heavy styles, fitting them together like perfectly machined metal parts, the components fitting so well you almost forget how weighty they are. The album isn’t on Spotify at the time I’m writing this, though the song “I Love You” is there as a single, but you can listen to the whole thing, as well as buy a digital copy, on the Godchilla Bandcamp page HERE. The vinyl just came out on November 1 in two versions by Smekkleysa, on black and clear vinyl, which you can order direct from the label HERE. This one is definitely worth a listen.