Vow

Though the sounds it makes could be considered retro in a heavy late-'60s/early-'70s way, Brooklyn's NAAM is very much in the present with the intensity of its performances. Wah pedals may dominate the guitar sounds of "Midnight Glow," one of the album's many high points, but they color the intensity among guitarist Ryan Lee Lugar, bassist John Preston Bundy, and organist John "Fingers" Weingarten. They play with and against each other with such natural intuition and carefully syncopated precision as to make NAAM a near-perfect band. Its second full-length takes its sound into the heavier recesses of its influences. Black Sabbath is the obvious nod (on the title track, for certain) but hardly the main one. The dark swell of voices and the dense instrumental walls of "Beyond" dwell somewhere between Spacemen 3 and Ash Ra Tempel, directly leading to the two-minute send-off, "Adagio." There's not a false move here; just levels of exciting psychedelia and demanding biker rock dipped in the blood of old-school horror flicks.