I have been fortunate enough to have followed Asteroid’s development from their four track demo a few years back through to this album. Luckily, at every stage of the bands’ progress Asteroid have managed to deliver solid and classy stoner rock. This is the Swede’s debut full length offering and the production has been beefed up along with a more prog orientated feel to the album; this 70s feel is no doubt aided by the fact that they recorded the album in the same studio where retro heavyweights Witchcraft do. Opening track ‘The Great Unknown’ has Asteroid’s distinctive duel vocals of Robin Hirse and Johannes Nilsson interspersed with Hammond organ-esque breakdowns; the whole song has a rather Deep Purple feel to it, which is certainly never a bad thing. The band have been described by their label as ‘fuzzed out psychedelic space rock‘, it’s quite a mouthful but hard to disagree with; this description is further illustrated in tracks like ‘Silver Leaf’ and ‘Water’ where the bands’ prog leanings manage to add depth to the songs rather than making them sound too lightweight.
It can be argued that Asteroid’s vocals are its main strength as both singers have unique, clean and strong voices that combine very well in harmonies. Each riff is sounds clear and crisp and is executed with a methodical precision which certainly sets them aside from most stoner outfits where it is deemed more important to create a wall of sound and fuzz; even the drums have a more concise feel to them, where every fill sounds necessary without ever being overly busy. There appears to be a current niche in this genre to make everything sound as retro as possible (arguably it’s pretty impossible to not to make stoner sound retro), but when Swedish acts such as Witchcraft and Burning Saviours enjoy critical praise it will certainly be interesting to see how Asteroid will fare. After seeing the steady progress they have already made, I’ll certainly hope to catch them when they play in the UK in May.