Lysergic is a relatively new band, but its members aren’t newcomers. It’s the long-gestating brainchild of Portuguese guitarist João Corceiro, whose experience includes bands like W.A.K.O., Okkultist, Allamedah, and more. In Lysergic he’s joined by other talented and experienced performers whose names we’ll give you below.
The band’s debut album is named Black and Blue, and it’s set for release on January 27, 2025. We’re told that it “was written, recorded and mixed entirely alone by João Corceiro silently over the last decade, and can be considered an autobiography in the form of music and poetry.”
One song from the album, which shares the name of the band, was released with an excellent video a couple of months ago, and today we’re happy to premiere another excellent video for another compelling album track, this one called “Of Rage and Power.”
In the song’s lyrics (all of which you’ll be able to see in the video), its narrator furiously proclaims that he was “Bred to be thrown away / Bound to grow through hate and beyond“:
For I am born
Of rage and power
Shaped by this torment
That calls for destruction
The song’s opening captures the bleakness of the narrator’s condition through vividly ringing notes and grim low-frequency throbs, and then it portrays the fury — in a powerful surge of incendiary screams, battering percussion, thunderous bass lines, and frenzied riffing that shivers and darts with vicious intent.
There’s no pulling back in the unhinged ferocity of the vocals, but the song’s pace does slow, all the better for Lysergic to inflict gut-punching but highly headbangable low-end blows and dismally squirming riffage, which evolves into a simmering and searing sensation that seems to channel both distress and a building hostility.
With yet another wrenching scream, the music boils over again in another blast-furnace attack, and then delivers a jolting, stop-start, machine-gun-like discharge that’s well-calculated to get heads hammering and bodies moving.
The video of Lysergic‘s performance adds to the song’s viscerally powerful impact. Directed by Joël Martins (Titanforged Productions), it’s masterful in its lighting, camera perspectives, and editing, and provides a compelling example of people reacting to the song in a live setting.
That first song from the album, “Lysergic,” also seized our attention. When I first heard it, two things about it sold me. One of them becomes obvious pretty quickly and the other is more subtle and slips in only as you go deeper into the track.
The quickly obvious aspect is the high energy — how simultaneously groovesome and whirling the music is, and how scorching the vocals are. The slowly slithering and vividly rippling riffage is mysterious in its mood, both sinister and seductive, but the music also becomes more frantic and fraught.
The other aspect that eventually surfaces is the clear-toned ring of a bright and beautiful keyboard melody, which becomes noticeable just before a spectacular guitar solo.
The melodies in the song do prove to be a signal aspect, even in the midst of savagery, so much so that even the harshness of the most soaring vocals almost sound like singing, even thought that’s not really what’s happening.
Lysergic explain that these first two singles “represent the sound and musical elements that the album will have: aggression counterpointed by melancholy”.
LYSERGIC is:
João Corceiro – Vocals/Guitar
Pedro Favas – Guitar
André Vaz – Bass
Xinês – Drums
TRACKLIST OF THE ALBUM:
01. Biography
02. Liquid Lust
03. Lysergic
04. Natureborn
05. Of Rage and Power
06. Last Word of Mine
For more info about the album as we approach its release date, keep an eye on the locations linked below.
https://linktr.ee/lysergicband
https://lysergicpt.bandcamp.com/
https://spoti.fi/4fYSPTw
https://www.facebook.com/lysergicpt