One of the greatest and most enduring songs of the 1980s remains A Flock Of Seagulls’ new wave masterpiece “Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)”. The song carries on for what feels like forever by its hypnotic, droning outro, and it’s pretty easy to get lost in the musical sea that swirls around a boundless space of synth-pop. Oddly, that’s the feeling that immediately comes to mind while listening to “Big Casino” by Gozu, the latest track off the Boston band’s excellent new album, Revival, out June 10 via Ripple Music.
Of course, there obviously aren’t any synthesizers here to be found, this is the furthest thing from lovelorn pop, and any big-haired whimsy is replaced by the pummeling guitar work of Doug Sherman and frontman Marc Gaffney. But as “Big Casino” approaches the half-way point, after mind-melding some sort of angry bastard rock child of Clutch and Type O Negative, the song takes on a whole other level of maximum riffage before settling into a cruising altitude that drones on and on until the listener is beaten to a pulp.
The track follows Revival’s lead single, “Nature Boy”, and really helps shape the album as one of the most crushing to come out of Boston in 2016. “Big Casino,” in all its menacing, crunchy glory, will be showcased with a handful of other Revival tunes this Friday night (June 3) at the Middle East in Cambridge, when Gozu offer up their new work to the gods for a record release party that should shake Central Square. Joining Gozu in the eventual sweat-box of an Upstairs room are ’16 Rumble champs Worshipper, Magic Circle, Wormwood, and Sylvia.
Check out the insane flyer below, by Heavy Hand Illustration, and take note of Gozu’s inclusion in this year’s Psycho Las Vegas, a weekend throwdown in August that finds the Boston dudes sharing the bill with Alice Cooper, Converge, Blue Oyster Cult, Sleep, Drive Like Jehu, and dozens of others. Blacklight poster flyer is also below.
