I’m not sure if psyc in the case of The Psycs stands for psychedelic, psycho, or perhaps psychic.  I’m also not sure if Psycho City refers to the band’s hometown of Peterborough.  I’ve never been there, but I haven’t heard any nice things about it, either.

Anyways, Psycho City is a 14-track, 75-minute opus released on Get Bent Records.  It opens with a slow, haunting title track, not unlike The Doors at their bleakest.  There’s hardly a pause as the opening guitar riff of second track Symptoms invades your ear canals.  This song almost has a grunge feel to it, but with a light, airy guitar tone that belongs in the swinging 60’s, not the dirty 90’s.

The opening of Cattle Cry reminds me of Radar Love by Golden Earring, although what follows is bare-bones blues, not cheesy radio rock.  There’s a very creepy, haunting vibe to this song…

Cracking Up has a vintage garage/heavy rock sound, and a groovy instrumental break.  I’d say it’s the best song on the first half of this album, for what that’s worth.  It almost descends into Fu Manchu territory about three minutes in, the first “stoner rock” moment on here.  I’m really digging the guitar grooves.

The Decider opens with what sounds like a disco beat on drums.  I find this very distracting.  About a minute-twenty in, it’s replaced by a killer heavy riff, as things slow down considerably.  Did I say that Cracking Up was the best song on the first half?  I might hafta rethink that, were it not for the drumming.

The psychedelic stoner grooves continue on Around the Bend.  It slows down considerably at the two-minute mark, before the heavy guitar sound comes back at 2:30 or so.  The song ends on a softer note at four and a half minutes long.

The band uses the soft-hard alternating pattern again on seventh track Bacteria, although this song lacks the bite of its predecessors.  Not so with Hey Man, on which heavy distorted guitar abounds.  The stop-start pattern a couple minutes in is absolutely crushing, starting Side Two on a high note.  Maybe the best song on the album, it’s followed by the spacey Gondola, which extends past the seven minute mark, a solid helping of killer psychedelic heaviness that flows into the next couple tracks.

It’s worth noting that there aren’t actually two sides on this CD, but that the track-listing is split into two columns, and with the music having a very retro feel, it’s not hard to imagine turning the album over after song 7.  Musically speaking, side two continues where side one left off: warm fuzzy guitars, booming bass, and plenty of cymbal hits, yet seems to shift from more structured material into freestyle jam freakouts.  The Psycs are a power trio in the true sense of the word, making heavy garage rock with melodic, psychedelic passages.  Straight from the 60’s, but with somewhat of a modern twist.  I’d love to see what they use to produce these killer retro sounds in a live environment.  Heavy stuff, indeed.

What did you think of this album?  Discuss it on the THTGIR forum