International heavy alternative rock project Miscellen return with their new album »Black Mandala I«

International alternative rock project Miscellen return with their new album, »Black Mandala I«, which was just released yesterday, August 26th, 2022 on CD and in digital format.

Heavy alternative rock from Washington DC and Bristol UK, slathered in psychedelia and noir, with thick bass grooves, wailing guitars and disreputable segues.

Tracklist:
01. Odyssey I
02. Nova
03. Odyssey II
04. Gaian Dolls
05. Wise Guy
06. Stone Fruit I
07. Gone Too Long
08. Stone Fruit II

On the 2nd anniversary of their debut, the depraved wanderings of psychedelic alt rock band Miscellen have led them into mystical terrain on »Black Mandala«, their new double-album about journeys which is being separately released in two parts.

Just like this dispersed group of journeymen, with varying degrees of instinct, reluctance, and delirium, you are navigating through time and space in a vessel of skin and faulty wiring that largely defies your understanding. You look for patterns among the vast incoherence and you find outlines of a cosmos that could be real or maybe just products of your imaginings.

With a modest sense of your origin and nothing more than dreams of your destination, you swerve in and out of the gravitational waves of culture and identity that you encounter along the course – and you feverishly adjust the controls of all the devices in front of you that have been constructed to manipulate nature in hopes of not having to experience it.

To find your way, you have to crash and collide with everyone else trying to find theirs, and the wreckage is left in place to provide choices and intrigue to all those who follow. The headwinds of ambiguity keep eroding what you’ve tried to align and leave your viscera unsynchronized with your mind. So, what to do… what to do? The only thing you can. You hurl yourself forward, across the stars and past the light – into the void where time and space fold back on themselves in an elaborate design and there’s nothing but black… the »Black Mandala«.

The songs on Miscellen’s »Black Mandala« reflect this journey you are on – evolving between moments that speed up and slow down… between cerebral passageways and large, hard-hitting episodes that reinforce the idea of experiences not ending the same way they began. While still predominantly adherent to a contemporary blend of psychedelic and heavy alternative rock, Miscellen expands their sound on »Black Mandala« with transcendent instrumentation and influences from eastern traditions. »Black Mandala« is a voyage in two parts: »Black Mandala I« (August 26, 2022) and »Black Mandala II« (when and where it takes you next, you’ll come to know).

Order the album here: miscellen.bandcamp.com/album/black-mandala-i

Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well