Album Details

• Artist: Farflung
• Album: A Wound In Eternity
• Label: Meteor City
• Year of Release: 2008
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: solitaryman on 2008-06-24

Farflung are a band who have been carving themselves a path through the underground for over a decade, working themselves up that hill slowly but surely. Their music certainly pushes for the stars, and as a matter of fact it all seems to take place amongst them. Think space-rock by way of Hawkwind and couple it with a modern psychadelic edge that also seems to orbit stoner rock territory. They've got the swagger and know-how of a Queens of the Stone Age, for sure. A Wound In Eternity should mark a big step on their paths through the cosmos.

These 8 tracks all offer dense compositions that constantly wind and unwind into new territories, never straying too far from their Hawkwind-inspired hard rock formula but giving plenty of room for some experimentations along the way. Opener "Unborn Planet" is rather straight-ahead when compared to the rest of the album, unless you count the funky dance-hall rhythmatic outro. This dumps us quickly into a more intimidating listen, "Endless Drifting Wreck", a song that is getting some praise for the band currently. It's easy to tell why, as the song shifts from an almost-metal thrasher into a stoned synth fantasy reminiscent of Echoes-era Pink Floyd. And then it really gets strange, as the synths transform into blobs of messiness and a guitar solo threatens to derail the entire arrangement. It's like this throughout the album, their somewhat gimmicky and undoubetly ballsy space-rock carrying you up into the ether only to let you drop back down...and they might just pick you up again.

There are some other fantastic tracks here, but all you sci-fi lovers out there will just have to experience A Wound in Eternity on your own. Deft musicianship goes to great lengths in assembling these tightly-spun space epics, and great care has been taken to avoid some common pitfalls of this type of music. Namely, they don't fall off the deep end with their lyrics (usually allowing them to reflect reality as much as any fantasy the music may conjure) and they never experiment to the point of being able to confuse it with wankery. This much is clear after hearing it: Farflung know what they're doing. 

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