Fuzz Meadows: Orange Sunshine | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Orange Sunshine is the latest release from Melburnian metalheads Fuzz Meadows. There’s just something in the water when it comes to Melbourne’s metal scene. It boasts a hugely supportive and widespread collective of bands that Fuzz Meadows slots in nicely with.

Fuzz Meadows explores an instrumental space, incorporating elements of shoegaze, post-rock and out-and-out metal that the stoner scene has become so known for. Fans of their German contemporaries Colour Haze will love the seamless blend in this album’s playbook. Fellow Melburnians Hotel Wrecking City Traders would probably be the closest likeness one could give, at least in terms of pure girth: the tracks on Passage to Agartha, for instance, never go below ten minutes. The longer tracks that such bands indulge in allow them -and this genre- to really wander off, and take you somewhere, while keeping you engaged in the sombre notes, just as much as jive inducing solo riffs. You'll find no better example than the closer on Orange Sunshine album, Benji: treating us to a slow burn until the madness kicks off at the five minute mark on this mammoth, fourteen-minute monster.

Benji acts as a cooldown to bookend Orange Sunshine. With the album starting off with a punchy piece in You Are The Void. Another long one but it doesn’t waste its time setting the pace. Something we’ve been familiar with from their debut EP Dogma/Clairvoyance exhibiting those themes.

Sígur Rós shouldn't be a band that comes to mind here, but I just couldn’t shake the thought in my head. Some tracks on their album Kveikur are reminiscent of the build-ups for me. I guess if you spend enough time traversing, giant, psychedelic, post-rock soundscapes, you're going to run into the other bands that live there. Keeping on the Icelandic theme, Sólstafir’s album Svartir Sandar also echoed in the back of my head as I listened to Orange Sunshine. Actually, let me get this off my chest: King Buffalo, Naxatras, New Zealand’s Jakob, Rosetta, Mogwai or Sydney’s We Lost The Sea - if you’re a fan of any of these bands, then I’d recommend giving Fuzz Meadows a look in. You won’t be disappointed.

I can tell in the first minute of a quarter-hour of thunder by Fuzz Meadow on Orange Sunshine, this sounds a lot like a band that has really found the groove it was looking for. More than that, they are clearly, really enjoying the ride.

- Arthur Henden.