When you call the opening track on your debut album “Bongsai”, you’d imagine there’s not not much else that needs to be said. And, pleasingly, Guenna initially sounds exactly as you’d expect them to. After 70 odd seconds of groove one of their two vocalists (its either Viktor or Oskar but who knows which?) finally intones: “We asked the Lord, to find the sword”. Sorted then.
Well, not quite, because before the track is done, it all gets a bit Jethro Tull and Guenna do it their way.
An album of frequently sprawling epics gets its first with “Dimension X” and this one truly does go wherever it chooses.
Even when it’s not as involved and labyrinthine, there is always something weird lurking just below the surface here, for all that “Dark Descent” floats and Elin Pålsson is sensational in her guest spot, you know it would attack you given half a chance.
This is one of those albums that you fill the review with words like “hypnotic” and there’s a lot of that going on in “Ordic Major.” There’s a very Elder, quasi-prog feel to this, and if you need to discuss what “Weedwhacker” sounds like, then you’re probably reading the wrong thing. But my goodness, it grooves.
And grooves and riffs are the things they live for, really. “Wizery” is full of them, which makes “Guenna’s Lullaby” with all its folk intentions, such a contrast.
Basically “Peak of Jin’Arrah” is what happened when someone said: “Tell you what boys, let’s mix stoner metal and prog rock” and no one told them to stop – to be honest, if someone had told them not to I rather suspect that Guenna would have done it anyway.
Rating 8.5/10
