Fu Manchu: "Clone of the Universe"

SoCal ramblings galore

Break out your skateboard, grow out your oddly specific beard style, and bring your best sunglasses: It's time for a new Fu Manchu record! If you expect a bunch of sun-baked, tarmac-scented stoner rock tunes, you never really can go wrong with Scott Hill and company.

Fu Manchu conjures up a near-perfect storm of heavy riffs with Clone of the Universe, the band's twelfth studio album, that could more or less be pretty adequately described like all their other albums: Groovy, rockin' stoned out metal punk. It's got a little bit of everything, from their recognisable vocal style to their pounding rhythm section and signature headbanger riffs. And with this album the originators cement just how good they are at keeping that formula fresh.

"...the boys from SoCal still managed to scrounge up more than enough good riffs..."

A friend of mine went so far as to call them the AC/DC of stoner rock. You don't expect them to reinvent themselves, because they do what they do better than anyone else. So will Clone of the Universe become a modern classic? I doubt it, but twelve albums in and the boys from SoCal still managed to scrounge up more than enough good riffs and memorable vocal lines to out-perform most newcomers and the few contemporaries who're still sticking around. The mammoth 18-wheeler of a song that ends the album, Il Mostro Atomico, sounds remarkably fresh and interesting and is, along with Don't Panic and (I've Been) Hexed, among the absolute high points of Clone of the Universe.

7/10

Released in 2018 by At The Dojo Records

Links

Fu Manchu OFFICIAL SITE
Fu Manchu on BANDCAMP
Fu Manchu on FACEBOOK

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