Lord Sterling – Today’s Song for Tomorrow – Review

Lord Sterling

Today’s Song for Tomorrow (Small Stone)
by Brian Varney

OK boys and girls, today’s word of the day is “echoplex.” Say it with me now: Echoplex. Don’t know what it is? You damn well will after a listen to Today’s Song for Tomorrow. Not since early Monster Magnet has a hard rock band so thoroughly saturated every pore of its sound with echoplex-y goodness. There are, of course, tons of other trippy effects, so don’t let me mislead you into thinking Lord Sterling are some kinda one-trick psychedelic pony. I don’t know the names of all the effects that’re used, and I’m not sure that it’s especially important, but nevertheless I can confidently state that the resulting album is much less aggressive and more texturally interesting than its predecessor, Weapon of Truth, which I also enjoyed.

“Texturally interesting.” Sounds like a load of crap, right? However, I dare you to let “Hidden Flame” scramble your brain for six minutes and try to come up with something better. In fact, I’d go so far as to say this is some sort of compliment – the mindfog I get from just one song is so disorienting that it fucks up my ability to come up with cutesy comparisons. And that’s just one song. If you also consider “Password,” where a simple, unadorned guitar line gradually builds into a full-on wall of freak with Robert Ryan’s Dez Cadena-esque vocals desperately clinging at air, or the ace cover of Floyd’s “Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun,” well, you’ll end up heavy-lidded and babbling about grape juice as well.
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