Released by: Metal Blade Records / Blacklight Media Records

Release Date: April 13th, 2018

Genre: Metal

Links: https://www.facebook.com/GOZU666/

Line Up:

Marc Gaffney – guitar and vocals
Joe Grotto – bass
Mike Hubbard – drums
Doug Sherman – lead guitar and sounds

Tracklist:

Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat
The People vs. Mr. T
King Cobra
Manimal
They Probably Know Karate
Prison Elbows
Stacy Keach
Ballad of ODB

When you’re 46 (still getting used to that,) a male, and raised in the South, one of the rites of passage of growing up in this area was being a wrestling fan. Excuse me, rasslin’. I was a rabid watcher of this once great sport during my formative years, seeing the Four Horsemen get created and come to prominence, watching one of the greatest tag team rivalries with the Rock ‘N’ Roll Express vs the Midnight Express, and seeing The American Dream Dusty Rhodes delivering that atomic elbow… man, it was excellent. And yes, it’s still real to me too dammit (at least the old school stuff.) So when a band name drops “Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat” as a song title, I’m probably going to check them out. The band Gozu (until now not on my radar at all) have unleashed their 6th album Equilibrium and I must say I came for the rasslin’ reference and stayed for the kick-ass songs.

Somewhere between Corrosion of Conformity and The Cult, lies the sound of this album, with a definite fuzzed up psychedelic drive, Gozu is the rare Stoner type band with the capabilities of having some radio appeal. Marc Gaffney’s voice has times that it reminds me exactly of Ian Astbury of The Cult, but with more of a gruff sound. It’s this vibrato thing he does that brings out that comparison The tunes are hard-hitting, never verging too far away from the standard Stoner fuzz tone, but honestly the songs have a shit ton of melody to them as well. Equilibrium is a surprisingly catchy album. Until the final track that is this epic 11-minute long song that is pretty badass. It’s darker than the rest of the album and caps a mostly positive feeling record perfectly with a brand new direction.

I went back and forth about whether I was going to review Gozu’s album Equilibrium. I liked it from the very first spin, but I just wasn’t sure if I could come up with much to say about it. Sometimes I really love an album, but I don’t have the words to talk about it. After a few more spins I decided it would be doing them a great disservice not telling the world about them.