PODVIG! just unleashed “Cloud Maze,” and it’s a trip through stoner space rock that’ll make your brain do backflips. Picture this: three dudes who used to make video games decide to jam out, and bam! They birth this monster of a track that’s part hypnotic trance, part cosmic madness. It’s proof that sometimes, you gotta shut off your brain and let the music possession take over.
Leading the charge is Al King, slinging his guitar like a goddamn wizard. This guy’s not just a six-string slinger – he’s a jack-of-all-trades who’s been everywhere and done everything. His riffs are like comets on crack, blending distorted desert vibes with trippy madness. When King plays, it’s not just music – it’s a freaky story that builds up like a ticking time bomb.
Ivan Drybas, the classically trained wildcard (conductor, pianist, sculptor), hijacks the keyboards with a maestro’s precision and a punk’s recklessness. His synths and organ don’t just add to the mix – they twist it into something from another dimension. It’s like if a black hole decided to hum a tune. Meanwhile, Eugene Smozhevsky—the groove warlock on bass and Chapman Stick—anchors the madness with low-end thunder, his fingers moving so fast on his strings and groove boxes, you’d think he made a deal with the devil.
What makes PODVIG! so thrilling is their refusal to color inside the lines. Three distinct musical DNA strands—King’s riff obsession, Drybas’s classical chaos, Smozhevsky’s groove pseudoscience—collide to create something gloriously alive.
If “Cloud Maze” is PODVIG!’s opening salvo, the rock world had better brace for impact. Play it, let the fuzz soak into your bones, and pray they don’t stay an “occasional jam band” for long. The cosmos needs more of this chaos.