ALBUM REVIEW: The Singularity – Wo Fat
In the dark and shadowy world of Dallas’ WO FAT, nothing is ever what it seems. Lurking in the depths of Texas, the psychedelic doom legends have returned with their seventh album The Singularity, an album that sees them in their most exploratory and adventurous form. Whilst The Singularity is not explicitly a concept album, its themes tackle the existential threats of humanity’s dark destiny, by nature making the album a brooding and gritty reflection on the times that we are all existing through. The album’s title itself can also refer to a point of no return, in which humankind’s destruction is most certainly assured. Venturing outside their well established blues-based paradigm, WO FAT explore the outer reaches of their sound to create a heavy, foreboding and intense album.
Given the album’s apocalyptic themes, the alluding to the environmental crisis and its irreversible feedback loops, alongside the sci-fi notion of ridiculously advanced artificial intelligence that is beyond our control, it makes for a very bleak outlook. Whilst it could also be utilised as a metaphor for the struggle between truth, reality, cultist ideas and manufactured information designed to disillusion and oppress, The Singularity looks to serve as a stark warning to us all. In a similar way that George Orwell’s 1984 gave us a stark and harrowing look into a future we want to avoid, WO FAT waste no time in hitting you with a hefty dose of existential dread against a backdrop of eerie psychedelic passages and crushing stoner riffs.
With the battle of the future and our planet being waged on the surface, under the heavy themes is an exciting exploration of psychedelic doom that we haven’t heard from WO FAT before. Even though the band are still tapping into their 1970s fusion influences, including elements that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Jimi Hendrix record, they have moved away from their signature blues-based sound in favour of something more trippy and progressive. These invigorating musical and sonic adventures have given WO FAT a new dynamic for people to dig into.
This album is definitely one for the purists, as The Singularity’s opening opus comes in at just under 14 minutes. Orphans Of The Singe has a cinematic quality that transcends through the album, as if it were the spaced out soundtrack to our eventual extinction. Strangely and eerily intense, these moods remain strong throughout the album. Overworlder utilises a funky wah rhythm that you instantly latch onto, the funky rhythms will have you spaced out and grooving. The Unravelling is the track with the most old school WO FAT attitude; with big, hulking fuzz laden riffs it wastes no time in unlocking the primal caveman energy within you as the steady beat pounds your ear drums. The Witching Chamber showcases this new side of WO FAT, an unusually eerie and intensely atmospheric track that taps into the more esoteric side of psychedelic doom. It is hypnotic and entrancing as it tells the story of an unfruitful journey through a chamber of lies from which you can’t escape.
Title track The Singularity is a high-octane fuzzy stoner anthem, with flashes of brilliance in the lead melodies tying all the grooving rhythm elements together. Album closer The Oracle is the band at their most experimental, atmospheric and haunting. The nearly 17-minute instrumental takes you through a whole plethora of emotions on its psychedelic journey, employing a large portfolio of bluesy, psychedelic, stoner and doom devices to move through a melancholic soundscape that is accentuated with the soft galloping rhythms of bongos or congas. Moving through its phases it is so easy to drift away with this track, as it takes you to a strange place that is only limited by your imagination.
This refreshing experimentation with their sound has opened up new creative avenues for WO FAT to exploit and they have done just that. Putting together ten-minute plus songs with a whole manner of moving parts and atmospheres is something fans should relish in. Even though the album doesn’t necessarily break new ground in the genre as a whole, it does mark the start of an exciting new chapter for the Dallas legends.
Rating: 8/10
The Singularity is set for release on May 6th via Ripple Music.
Like WO FAT on Facebook.