EVERY GENRE PROJECT - February 15 - Full-On Psytrance
Genre of the Day - Full-On Psytrance
Album of the Day - Vicious Delicious by Infected Mushroom
To begin, please do not eat mushrooms that have been tarnished or infected in any way, fungi is already scary enough in regards to human health. Although eating something that’s viciously delicious is very real—why else would restaurants serve a spice level literally classified as “Dangerous”! But if infected mushroom is a metaphor for shrooms, then go ahead, just don’t claim you suddenly discovered that other people have feelings or something.
Today is our return to the land of psytrance, a dizzying world of high-tempo riffs combined with the hypnotic power of trance music to bring you musically into a higher plane of existence. It’s interesting how new age music and psytrance essentially have the same spiritual guidance underpinning their existence–psychedelics and music’s power to transform—yet they differ so much in intensity. Introverts versus extroverts, maybe? But last time, we were looking at hi-tech psytrance, with an even more extreme tempo and denser, jittery compositions. Full-on psytrance, despite inspiring hi-tech’s intensity, reels us back in a bit with a happy medium in BPM and predates it.
Infected Mushroom was one of the pioneers of hi-tech in the 2000s, and Vicious Delicious is essentially their crown gem. Though this particular effort is classified as full-on, they generally seemed to have excelled at blending psytrance and a bunch of sonic palettes, stretching the limits of the genre.
That’s evident across the album: the opening track, “Becoming Insane” (relatable this time of year) seamlessly blends flamenco guitar solos with traditional psytrance build ups. “Artillery” is an interesting segue, with electric guitar kind of acting as a substitute for the iconic 303 bass that can be found in a lot of psytrance, but it leans out of the genre without adding much to the album as a whole. “Heavyweight” is a better application of their sonic adventuring, blending a shredding glam guitar riff with unpredictable psytrance buildups and breaks. There’s also points where they sound like they’re trying to be the psytrance Daft Punk, at least vocally such as “Forgive Me.” Nonetheless, their dabbling in a variety of sounds elevates the album for me: there’s a genuine blending skill at work in their approach that leads to a smooth, mostly cohesive result. The main issue is the album cover: blythe dolls and similar figurines may be in on TikTok right now, but it still doesn’t mean I can accept this strangely haunting album cover.