Solar Halos: Solar Halos

Rippling desert psych from the far edge of the mind

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Hailing from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Solar Halos – like their fellow residents (and the former home for two members) Horseback – are spiritually wedded to the deserts far to the west of them, sounding like a peyote cult calling out their surroundings until they effect a rite of transformation.

Musically, this isn’t an untrodden path, and across these six tracks of vision-invoking doom/psych you can hear strains of Horseback’s rolling, enlightenment-seeded groove, Om’s mantric, unblinking pulse and even a bit of Kylesa’s restless will to transcendence. But this three-piece sound as though they’re fully in control of their own destiny, locked around the twin vocals of Nora Rogers and Eddie Sanchez, each taking turns to chant visionary sermons as if their consciousness is being flooded with sensation.

The Vast White Plains charges its bristling riffs until they’re ready to ascend to a higher state, Wilderness’s exhausted reverie turns your mind into camera film exposed to the sun and Solar Halos prove as expansive as a head about to burst.

Jonathan Selzer

Having freelanced regularly for the Melody Maker and Kerrang!, and edited the extreme metal monthly, Terrorizer, for seven years, Jonathan is now the overseer of all the album and live reviews in Metal Hammer. Bemoans his obsolete superpower of being invisible to Routemaster bus conductors, finds men without sideburns slightly circumspect, and thinks songs that aren’t about Satan, swords or witches are a bit silly.