ALBUM REVIEW: Crimson Riders – Bokassa

Picture this; your band releases their debut album, and within a year of its release, you suddenly find yourselves not only being touted as the “favourite new band” of one of heavy metal’s most legendary figures, but invited to open sold-out stadium shows all across Europe. For Norwegian stoner-punk trio BOKASSA, this was no dream, but their reality, as METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich proclaimed exactly that of the Trondheim trio’s 2017 full-length Divide & Conquer on his Beats 1 radio show, It’s Electric!, back at the start of 2018 before hand-picking the group to join his band’s WorldWired 2019 tour alongside Swedish occult-rock juggernauts GHOST. Thrust rapidly into the spotlight in such a public way, BOKASSA have since quickly begun picking up both fan and industry kudos for their powerful punk-meets-black metal sound, and anticipation for a follow-up record quickly began to build until finally, the announcement of Crimson Riders came.

Foreboding intro track Brologue sets us off on the journey; its melancholic and ominous discordant notes setting the listener up for the album to come in a rather deliberately misleading way, with the initial dirge giving way to a lumbering, crunching melodic guitar line. As far as intro tracks go, it’s interesting enough, but the real magic is still to come. Any semblance that Crimson Riders might be an entire album within this kind of wheelhouse pretty much get crumpled up into a ball and thrown into a volcano with the thunderous arrival of first track proper Charmed & Extremely Treacherous, a furious CLUTCH-by-way-of-KVELERTAK blackened-punk nail bomb. It’s here that Kaarstad’s vocals make their presence known for the first time; his throaty, roaring delivery immediately setting the bar high with an impactful and instantly catchy performance that imbues far more melody than you’d necessarily expect. Throw in some “Woah-oh-oh” backing vocals and you’ve essentially got the template for exactly what it is that BOKASSA do so well – big, slap-you-round-the-face riffs attached to songs so anthemic that they make you feel like you could suplex a planet.

Vultures takes things in a slightly more esoteric direction; beginning as what could almost be a love letter to QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE at their most stoner-y, before going on to have the absolute cheek to throw a saxophone solo into the mix. It probably shouldn’t work at all, but it somehow does, and the overall depth of melodic sensibilities spread across the track’s run-time ensure that there’s probably at least three or four different parts you’ll find yourself humming, singing, bellowing and air-guitaring like a lunatic along to before it’s over. Meanwhile, lead single Mouthbreathers Inc. brings back some of the furious elements of BOKASSA’s sound before quickly settling into a familiarly hard-hitting, fast-paced groove that it’s impossible not to want to headbang along to with all your might. Arguably one of Crimson Riders’ most conventionally ‘single-like’ moments, this is nonetheless another expertly-formed slab of rock from the Norwegians; with Kaarstad getting to flex the more melodic end of his vocal abilities on a track so relentlessly driving that it pretty much single-handedly throws down the gauntlet to any other bands of this ilk currently going.

As if deliberately trying to make as much of a U-turn as possible, Wrath Is Love slows things right the way down from a full sprint, to a steady chug. They might take a slower-paced approach than its immediate predecessor, but in doing so, BOKASSA here manage to up the anthemic quality to borderline stratospheric levels. Thunderous riffing is the order of the day with this particular song, as Kaarstad and bassist Bård Linga fully lock in with drummer Olav Dowkes to generate an earth-shaking groove that simply brings a massive grin to your face as at powers along. After such a instantaneously driving song, it then comes as a slight surprise that title track Crimson Riders actually takes a second to get going; opening with a slight reprise of the motifs from Brologue, before suddenly kicking into high-gear and seemingly going full thrash for a rip-roaring blast of high-tempo ridiculousness that goes barely 30 seconds before concluding once more with the sparse, cleaner guitar line it opened with. Clocking in at just a hair over the two-minute mark in length, it’s a strange inclusion, but one that again serves to highlight the sheer dexterity of the three musicians involved and the breadth of styles they can go to even in such condensed time-frames.

Probably the highlight of the whole album, Captain Cold One follows next. This might as well be the sonic equivalent of downing an entire crate of beer, crushing the cans on your forehead and jumping straight into a mosh pit, such is the sonic impact of this particular track. Armed with yet another face-punchingly powerful riff, some wonderfully adept vocal interplay, and a genius mosh call at one point of “Let the cold one flow”, this really is tailor-made for the live environment. Kaarstad’s roar is as the peak of its power here, and his tongue seemingly lodged heavily in his cheek as he manages to name-check and humorously throw in references as wide-ranging as NICKELBACK, TRIVIUM, PINK, HALL & OATES, MUSE and Paul Blart: Mall Cop, all within moments of each other, in a frankly hilariously daft set of lyrics you probably won’t forget in a hurry.

For those who want one last track of full-on intensity, Blunt Force Karma then rocks up to slap you around with a couple more minutes worth of fiery riffing. It’s arguably one of Crimson Riders’ most direct moments, with an almost HATEBREED-esque stomp and focus on gang vocals firmly placing it within the hardcore-punk end of BOKASSA’s wheelhouse, and the effect is simply to remind you if you’d somehow not already realised, that this is a band capable of going really goddamn hard when they want to.

As if things hadn’t been varied enough up to this point though, we then finally hit Crimson Riders’ final track. Immortal Space Pirate 2 serves as a direct sequel to Divide & Conquer’s own closing number Immortal Space Pirate (The Stoner Anthem), and this is where things get suitably weird one final time. Whereas everything up to now has generally fallen within the concise two-to-four minute mark, here the trio decide to fully get their prog-metal on, with a near-seven-minute opus that incorporates elements from just about every other section of the album thus far; taking the spaced-out clean guitars of Brologue and Crimson Riders as bookends for a sprawling odyssey riffs that ends up feeling like a drawn-out version of what they have, to this point, been condensing far more. 

Crimson Riders isn’t merely just Divide & Conquer 2.0 – it’s a monumental step-up in quality from an already promising band, putting forward a concise yet entirely enjoyable collection of huge, arena-ready anthems to which BOKASSA can easily nail their colours in the biggest of live environments for the foreseeable future. Not a single moment here feels unnecessary or overly-drawn-out, and considering the relative youth of the band’s career, the level of song-craft and sheer willingness to experiment that’s on display here is genuinely remarkable. Managing to meld properly colossal-feeling moments of air-punchingly anthemic songwriting to an instrumental canvas that at times feels like being punched square in the face is no mean feat, and the degree to which BOKASSA have apparently pulled it off on Crimson Riders feels like it could be the start of something very special indeed.

Rating: 10/10

Crimson Riders is set for release June 21st via MVKA. 

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