Something is stirring in the lysergic spectral swamps of supernatural Detroit. That legendary city's significance in the evolution of wild and heavy music through the ages is beyond dispute, but there is always room for another revolution. Purveyors of a uniquely vibrant strain of balls-out psychedelic turbo-rock, Octopus are about to blow open the doors of perception and invite everyone in for a party. Formed in 2008 by guitarist J Frezzato (ex-Electric Six) and vocalist Masha Marjieh, this ten-legged groove machine began as the channeling of a nocturnal hallucination...

If the music on Octopus' debut album, Supernatural Alliance, tells us anything, it's that the spirit of low-slung and bowel-rattling psych rock is alive and well. After years of paying their dues and letting the spirit of invention propel them forwards, the quintet are now on blistering collective form and beyond ready to conquer the world. Veering from thunderous, Sabbath-fuelled rampages like Beyond The Center and the album's mighty title track to the piano-driven, old school rock'n'roll clatter of Strike (While The Iron is Hot) and the woozy, kaleido-blues of the wryly titled Fleetwood Mac, it's a bold and supremely confident opening salvo from a band that seem to be achieving great things powered only by instinct. With a line-up completed by Matt O'Brien (bass/formerly of Detroit fuzz-funk crew Big Chief), Chuck Burns(drums, also a member of Speedball and Seduce, formerly of Universal Temple Of Divine Power) and Adam Cox (keyboards), Octopus are already firmly connected to the cosmic musical mainframe.

Where many other like-minded bands adhere rigidly to an ethos of total-retro-or-die, Octopus sound neither like the past nor the present. Instead, this is a wholesale rejuvenation of psychedelic rock's life-affirming essence. From the album's dazzling, synapse-tickling artwork to the songs' cerebral but surreal lyrical conceits, it's an enthralling soundtrack for a magical world gone wrong.

Newly signed to legendary UK label Rise Above Records, Octopus have found a natural home for the launch of their first slab of supercharged psych-metal splendor. Their new mission is to take their riff-heavy third-eye detonations on the road, bringing psychedelic fury to the masses and, if the planets align, bringing the art of blowing minds and bucking the rock'n'roll system back with a reverb-drenched bang. Next stop, the red planet!

"I remember being a kid, hanging out in video game arcades," J Frezzato recalls. "Those arcades, they were all dark, with blue and red neon lights. Smoke. Drug deals. You went in there as a kid, and you were like, 'Fuck yeah! I'm on Mars now!' There were always Blacklight dragon posters on the walls. That was the image that kept coming to me when we were working on this record. Rock's been turned into a beer commercial, a sporting event and museums and it's been broken into a million orthodox subgenres. I'm not into that. Rock is an underground thing. That's where it belongs."

Supernatural Alliance tracklisting:

"The Center"
"Supernatural Alliance"
"Slave And Master"
"Strike"
"Child Of Destiny"
"The Unknown"
"Sword And The Stone"
"All The Love"
"Black Dynamite"
"Dragonhead"