BLAAK HEAT (photo: Julie Patterson) Los Angeles avant-garde psych rock band BLAAK HEAT (formerly Blaak Heat Shujaa) will release its new album, Shifting Mirrors, on May 13 via Tee Pee Records. The LP was recorded with Grammy Award winning producer Matt Hyde (Slayer, Deftones), at Megawatt Recording (Santana, Tool). In advance of the release of Shifting Mirrors, MXDWN premieres the new BLAAK HEAT song, "Ballad of Zeta Brown", calling the track "constantly-captivating". Hear "Ballad of Zeta Brown" now at this location.
BLAAK HEAT has also released a video for the record's lead track, "Sword of Hakim", which showcases the unit's unruly guitar tones and dynamic rhythmic approach; see it now at this location.
BLAAK HEAT just performed as part of the 2016 Levitation Festival and its kickoff event, appearing at the Mohawk in Austin alongside The Well, Pinkish Black and Chelsea Wolfe. As part of its coverage of the show, the Austin Chronicle called the trio's unique sound, "Middle Eastern-flavored power rock – think Cream if its members had grown up with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan instead of Robert Johnson" (read more here).
BLAAK HEAT's intercontinental desert rock engulfs your mind in images of mystic castle mirages, slamming both body and soul into an ocean of reverb fuzz. Formed in Paris by guitarist / vocalist Thomas Bellier (ex-Spindrift) in 2008, the band relocated to Los Angeles in 2012. The transcendental tension between the group's heavy rock roots and its organic inclination to drift towards psychedelia pays homage to the vast collection of mind-expanding sounds the trio grew up on: neo-psychedelia, surf rock, spaghetti westerns, Middle Eastern scales and Far Eastern melodies. Shifting Mirrors' is an album that is both intriguing and unrelenting, featuring 10 tracks that explore a range of tonalities, tempos and traditional soundscapes. The record builds on the band's self-coined "Arabian fuzz" and is the follow-up to the trio's 2013 Scott Reeder-produced full-length, The Edge of an Era, which was hailed as a "journey down a road littered with influences from '60s psychedelic prog-rock, '70s Krautrock, and chord structures influenced by Middle Eastern and world music" by LA Weekly "We took our favorite Middle Eastern tonalities and reinterpreted them through the prism of our cultural baggage; weird European psychedelia, a healthy dose of vintage hard rock and some experimental jazz," says Bellier. "With producer Matt Hyde, we were able to mix loud fuzz guitar tones with traditional acoustic instruments, such as the Oud and the Kanun. For example, the track 'Mola Mamad Djan' is an Afghan folk song for which we reworked the arrangement into something more rocking."
1.) Anatolia
2.) Sword of Hakim
3.) The Approach To Al-Mu'tasim
4.) Taqsim
5.) Ballad of Zeta Brown (MXDWN premiere)
6.) Black Hawk
7.) Mola Mamad Djan
8.) Tamazgha
9.) The Peace Within
10.) Danse Nomade
In addition to Bellier, BLAAK HEAT features Mike Amster (drums) and Henry Evans (bass).
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