Berlin stoner rock trio Kadavar has been around for 7 years and is ready to release their fourth full-length album. Rough Times is out now through Nuclear Blast Records.

The band opens up the album with the title track. Rough Times has strong drums and one of the many fuzz-infused riffs on the record that strongly remind me of Wolfmother. Into the Wormehole features another good stoner riff and a nice drumbeat with a modern alternative rock touch to it. Skeleton Blues has a very clear Led Zeppelin influence in the verse. Again this song has a very good, strong guitar riff, which is why this must be my favorite track of the album. Die Baby Die, as well as Into the Wormehole, were released earlier before with music videos, definitely check them out:

Vampires is very bluesy song, they even experimented with organ in the background. Words of Evil features vocals that just reminded me of Black Sabbath‘s Paranoid. This is when I realised that the music Kadavar is making, is not necessarily bad, it’s just a little overdone. But I’ll come back to that later. They decided to end the album on a soft note: You Found The Best In Me has an unexpected soft, country vibe. For the outro Kadavar chose for a twist; A L’Ombre Du Temps is a calm song with spoken vocals in French, no drums, only trippy guitar effects.

I didn’t discuss every song on the record, because the songs kind of flow into each other. I enjoyed the album in its whole, but I found it hard to pick songs that I really liked because it didn’t grab my full interest. Even though the vocals are not my cup of tea, I like that the song titles and lyrics are kinda dark and evil and not just about a broken heart or a one night stand like most other blues rock bands write about. I’m a big fan of the genre they play and it’s an album that I could buy, but it would end up somewhere in the back of my pile of records and I would listen to it once or maybe twice more. I like the band, I’m definitely gonna check them out soon and follow their upcoming music. It’s just that they don’t jump out in comparison to other great bands that are around at the moment. The music they play is just not anything new and the songs simply don’t stick around that much. Bands like Blues Pills, Wolfmother and Rival Sons are all returning to the 70’s bluesy hard rock sound that Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath had. I really love the modern twist these bands give to it, but those are all some very strong bands they have to outdo. Kadavar is a band that has an appealing sound, but the disappointing vocals and lack of originality I mentioned earlier are a bit of a let down.

Release: September 29th, 2017
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Tracklist:
1. Rough Times
2. Into the Wormehole
3. Skeleton Blues
4. Die Baby Die
5. Vampires
6. Tribulation Nation
7. Words of Evil
8. The Lost Child
9. You Found the Best in Me
10. A L’Ombre Du Temps