Album Review: Samsara Joyride – “The Subtle and the Dense” (Stoner/Heavy Psych)

Written by Kirk

What exactly is “heavy music”? How do you define it? Is it the way the music sounds, or is there more to it than that? These are questions I have found myself asking time and time again since officially returning to the world of heavy metal and fully immersing myself into that musical culture in late 2018. I was too young to fully understand or appreciate it when I first heard Black Sabbath’s Paranoid oozing through the wall separating my bedroom from my older brother’s, but such a stalwart physical barrier really didn’t do much to keep that heavy, ominous sound from penetrating my senses and nestling itself deep within the recesses of my mind. Like so many metalheads before me, Ozzy, Tony, Geezer, and Bill opened the doorway to a dark and mysterious world.

As quickly as that doorway was opened, it was not open for long as my brother’s dalliance with heavy metal was rather brief. But, as many of us can attest, once a metalhead then always a metalhead. I missed the entirety of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, the emergence of death metal, the first couple waves of black metal, and the rise of stoner rock, etc. But I threw myself body and soul into grunge and hung around for a while during the rise of nu metal, plus I’ve been known to hyper focus and dive headfirst into a band’s discography when the mood strikes. Accessibility to this music is, of course, paramount, and it was nice to be able to explore without being gatekept for “not being kvlt enough” or whatever, and I’m fortunate in that I’ve been able to connect with so many fellow metalheads who stay abreast of which bands are cool and which ones are shitty edgelords…or worse.

Now, it should be no surprise to you that I’m a big fan of doom metal and stoner rock. Like, huge. It goes back to what I mentioned in the first paragraph and how Black Sabbath essentially wrote the blueprints for both sub-genres. Plus I will likely always be a sucker for Iommian worship. I am, after all, only human and deeply, deeply flawed. But I’m always looking for something new: a fresh take on an old trope or something completely unheard of that pushes the boundaries of its sub-genre as well as my expectations. And while this task admittedly gets harder and harder to achieve the further I explore the world of heavy music, doing so gets sweeter each and every time. That’s why I was so blown away when I started jamming to The Subtle and the Dense, the latest record from Vienna, Austria’s Samsara Joyride. Flipping the script on the Iommian riff worship and taking things back to Black Sabbath’s blues roots (remember, they used to be a blues band called Earth), they play a style of blues that sound as though JPT Scare Band’s Acid Blues is the White Man’s Burden is now its own genre of music.

What started off as Michael Haumer and Florian Miehe jamming some deserty blues in the living room became 2020’s debut Stranger EP, a very straightforward blues record with faint notes of desert rock and heavy psych to give it added texture. Shortly thereafter, Daniel Batliner and Andreas Mittermühlner joined the fold, they became a quartet, and Samsara Joyride was officially born. In Fall 2022, they released their self-titled debut album and leaned more heavily into the stoner rock and heavy psych side of things, taking on a sound more akin to that of The Doors if Jim Morrison had somehow gotten sober (or at least “California sober”). But, again, this record is rooted deeply in the blues and feels very much like a blues record (in a very good way – listening to these songs feels like you’re riding in the tour van with the band as they’re telling these stories, and it all feels so earnest and genuine).

When you hear The Subtle and the Dense, be prepared for a completely different animal; this is Samsara Joyride as you’ve never heard them before. Shifting gears by taking their blues roots and applying that focus to their stoner rock and heavy psych influences, this album is nothing like their previous laid-back vibe. From the two-hit combo that is album openers “I Won’t Sign, Pt. 1” and “I Won’t Sign, Pt. 2”, the passion and aggression is palpable. If you can still stand after that, then “Too Many Preachers” is guaranteed to knock you on your ass. “Sliver” and “Who Tells the Story” slow things down a bit and give you a chance to catch your breath, but then “No One is Free” arrives just in time to grind your face into the dirt. And then we close things out with “Safe & Sound”, a gentle bluesy reminder that, in spite of all the ways that life likes to knock us down and kick us in the teeth, it’s those same bruise and broken bones that make it possible for us to get up, dust ourselves off, and push back against what makes it hard to get up each and every day.

THE BOTTOM LINE

So, what is heavy music? The answer is simultaneously the most complex and the simplest thing imaginable because it’s different for each person. For me, it’s the way music conveys emotions or feelings. This is an easy concept to grasp when listening to death metal or black metal or doom metal because the music and lyrics are so bleak. However, we often don’t think of psychedelic rock being heavy music (which could be, perhaps, why we delineate “psychedelic rock” from “heavy psych,” but what do I know). Psychedelic rock is often whimsical and playful, and there is a lightness to Samsara Joyride’s playing on The Subtle and the Dense that is noticeably different from the past releases. What makes it heavy, however, is the force they put behind it, the way their music reflects the dark tones of the lyrics. Lyrically, this album is so deeply rooted in the blues that it’s sprouting branches. The blues have always been about overcoming life’s many hardships, and that is what’s at the core of The Subtle and the Dense. And what could be heavier than staring the reality of existence in the eyes?