I’ve recently watched a two-hour interview of Paul Stanley in which The Star Child shares anecdotes about turning KISS into a successful enterprise. While Stanley’s success is undeniable, you’ll soon notice that his stories tend to focus on the most important person in his life – himself. Try a drinking game of taking a sip whenever he utters the words “I,” “me”, or “myself,” and you will have drunk yourself under the table within minutes.
We’re now trained to see arrogance as a virtue. But it must be hard to live with such self-confidence. That’s because if there aren’t any things greater than yourself, if there isn’t anything to inspire awe and respect, living is quite a terrifying prospect. That’s precisely what a band like The Big Rip has realised.
In fact, The Big Rip’s “Olympus Mons” EP plays like a spiritual record for those who haven’t yet been acquired by a religion and whose praying will somehow need to be blended with other important passions – Sci-Fi movies, weed, discussions about the prospect of the world existing for a few more centuries in the state it’s at.
This is music for people who want to believe in something that they can touch and that could crush them within seconds. Take the opening track, “Behold, This Mountain,” in which the band turns itself into stoner-rock prophets of the highlands. Fans, and there are many of them, of Stoned Jesus are likely to develop an unhealthy passion for this.
But don’t get hysterical now. This is the kind of trip on which you need to keep your cool. The guitar parts used across “Kaktus” bring to mind Kim Thayil’s Soundgarden riff-laying, and the vocals bring to mind Michael Poulsen’s chesty growl.
On “Kraken Mare,” the band entertains its more extravagant fancies, once again, using fantastical beasts and the thrill of knowing that any of those could, if brought into reality, snap your neck in seconds, creating a dazed mythos for itself.
And where does it all leave us? Stranded in our imagination, where we’ve become worshippers of monsters that live on tall cliffs or at the bottom of the ocean. But who’d trade this for the real world? The EP’s closing track, the title track, brings “Olympus Mons” full circle. The well-designed, excellently played, moody stoner rock track washes back to shore, and onto a mountainous island that you’re destined to never be able to leave.
