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Generous Maria - Command of The New Rock, Abstract Records

With a cover satirizing 2001 a Space Odyssey, you get what you expect - 70's influenced, heavy retro, stoner rock. The real surprise here is that these Swedes play this stuff well. "Big Shiny Limo" has a Sabbath\Cathedral style and marks the team of Johansson and Nilsson as a competent psyche stoner duo. Visions of stacked Marshalls appear with the Blue Cheerish "All Units Are Out." To further confound and amaze, the band takes a "Soulflight" that's pure Doors minus the organ. "Ashram of The Absolute" follows with a 70's type jam instrumental, a musical time warp with a southern bent. Vocalist Goran Florstrom rides the ebb and flow of heavy and mellow riffs effortlessly, with pipes along the lines of Chris Cornell and a less nasal Axl Rose. "Firebug" is a seemingly impossible incarnation of a mix of Cream and Soundgarden, but Generous Maria pulls it off seamlessly!

(Sabbath Steve)

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