Like the gnarliest psychedelics, Shaman Eyes’ debut single Find Your Mind will grab your brain by the haunches and rip you so far out of reality, you’ll need a roadmap to get back.
A brand spanking new act from Adelaide, right now Shaman Eyes are sitting pretty on 54 Facebook likes. If you’re the kind of dude or lady who loves digging up silver lining and bragging about it to your mates, let this be your official hot tip of the month.
Headbang so hard you rip open a wormhole to Woodstock with Find Your Mind, the raging debut effort from Adelaide’s Shaman Eyes.
The solo project of Aidan Demczuk, Shaman Eyes will feel cozy and familiar to fans of Aussie psych rock renegades the likes of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, with a melodic vocal sprinkling courtesy of Thee Oh Sees.
It’s a formula that’s been proven time and time again for emerging artists in that ripper psych space: throw down some rancid, fuzzed out progression, mix in some mind-bending lyrics, and chuck the whole thing through a pedal board the size of a fridge.
But there’s a cherry on top of this established recipe for Shaman Eyes. The riffing is especially weighty, chunkier that what we’re used to, and while King Gizz will often machinegun lyrics to suit this style, Demczuk provides far more vocal variance.
He’s fast, he’s slow, he’s low and he’s high throughout the runtime, spitting out lyrics with the feeling of impending deliverance that a new band needs so dearly.
The same can be said with the rest of the sonics in Find Your Mind. Like a sure-coated Queens of the Stone Age ripper, this tracks bends and warps, a consistently and chaotically evolving monster that will snarl up at you with a new face upon every new phrase.
While the high-energy realms of this track are what you’ll remember, it’s the moments Demczuk cuts the noise and brings things back to the ground which really stand out to me. Short turns of bass-dominated darkness are squeezed between the choruses, the sophomore break opening the floodgates for a quickened, virtuoso’s solo.
Given the current psych-rock headspace, it’s inevitable that Shaman Eyes will be picked up by a ton of fans. The sonic brawn of Psychedelic Porn Crumpets mixed with the guitar drones of Ty Segall are the potent cocktail at work here, and once Demczuk has a slew of shows under his belt, the fandom will flow.
