Celestial Power
Smouldering debut album on Cardinal Fuzz records
‘Are you ready to die and be reborn’….these are the words that open the album and which will make total sense 40 minutes later if and when you emerge on the other side with your mind intact…
This record always promised to be a little bit special with Celestial Power being comprised of 2/3 of Dead Sea Apes (Brett Savage and Chris Hardman ) joined by Cardinal Fuzz head man Dave Cambridge. This little gathering has laid down some seriously powerful sounds; four tracks of immense amp-overloading mass and density……a transmutation of sound into a physical force.
It blasts you straight into the outer realms with ‘Politics Of Ecstasy’ a churning relentless riff, close to collapsing in on itself but spiralling back on its own dark orbit and powering on, deep and heavy. Throughout the album the guitars seem to corrode the atmosphere around you and melt time and space, awash with feedback and distortion. Add the predatory growling low end, whipcrack hammering drums and general atmosphere of dread and menace and you have a colossal beast of a record; a screaming soundtrack to an altered state..one for the heads and the head nodders, the travellers of inner space and explorers of the outer limits. On ‘Mandate For Heaven’, with a guest appearance from Nik Rayne of The Myrrors, you’re dragged through a wormhole in space to collide with a monumental extra doomy Sabbath riff travelling in the opposite direction, typifying the general feeling of hugeness to the record; a beautiful bone crushing noise on a galactic scale.
It was a strange and rare alchemy that brought this album into being and it packs a colossal punch..don’t expect light relief or gentle meanderings… this is repetition as religion delivered with an evil glee and likely to leave your amp a charred ruin and your ears ringing, but we’d have it no other way! The Celestial Power album is destined for mythical status; hunt a copy down while you can or get down on your knees and beg for a repress! I just hope they’re inspired enough by the creation of this beast to get back into the studio again in the future…
Gary Powell, June 2026
