ALBUM REVIEW: Atom Juice – Atom Juice
With the 2025 festival season in full swing, you may notice that we have a flurry of psychedelic bands coming at us from all angles. The full spectrum is accounted for from chilled-out, reverb-heavy, vibe-riding bands, like KHRUANGBIN and GLASS BEAMS to more fuzz-laden, jazz-progressive, experimental outfits like PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS. It’s tricky to find your edge in such a saturated genre, with so many impressive bands churning out great records.
Enter Polish five-piece ATOM JUICE, who disregard the overbearing weight of expectation that may otherwise smother a debut album and carry us down an ethereal lazy river of funkadelic groove with a mesmerising all-encompassing sound to drift away to.
The smartest move ATOM JUICE made on this record was opting for long, sprawling, and searching epics. By opting for less songs with longer running times it gives them the space to explore and fulfil all elements of their playing. Though it runs the risk of being a culmination of overinflated pretentious fillers, Atom Juice has the artistic integrity and musicianship to create an odyssey of groovy, out of body, compositions.
The angelic vocal harmonies floating across the record-though stunning- are used sparingly to emphasise the jam band sound ATOM JUICE have strived for. Guitarists Bartek Dobry, Karol Melak and Pat Rajko execute their playing beautifully throughout the record and make no missteps whatsoever. From the dreamy pitched triads skipping along the funky keys to the distortion-fuelled ascending notes carrying us into a whole new dimension. The exploration allowed to each guitar part is weighted beautifully over wavey wah pedal infused chords.
Even stagnating scale-based riffs you’d find in your run-of-the-mill garage band are introduced at perfect times to ramp up the intensity. Listen to Gooboo, and the song climaxes in a raucous jam-band riff frenzy. The genius of Atom Juice is they don’t lazily throw fuzz laden pentatonic scales in your face. Instead, they build each song from scratch and prove themselves masters of anticipation making the guitars all the more rewarding when they are unleashed upon your ear drums.
All the while bassist Jan Rabiega treats us to traditional funky 70’s basslines which carries the groove and with the abundance of guitars, almost goes unnoticed. The same goes for drummer Piotr Kuks who controls the rhythm of the tracks commanding them to ebb and flow. With these two subtle yet key elements, we avoid a wall of guitar noise and it adds some structure to the tracks without compromising the fluidity.
Heavy Psych Sounds has an impressive roster of bands like PENTAGRAM, MARGARITA WITCH CULT, and ACID MAMMOTH who all make their living with face melting, guitar shredding juggernauts. While we love to sink our teeth into juicy riffs, ATOM JUICE sets themselves aside from their label mates by striding forward with ethereal, peaceful, and beautifully crafted compositions. Atom Juice is a much-welcomed addition to Heavy Psych Sounds and have delivered a mesmerising debut album.
Rating: 8/10
Atom Juice is set for release July 11th via Heavy Psych Sounds.
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