The Warlords of Rock N Roll Thunder And Lightning - Act 1: The Dr. Kawalsky Files EP

By: Joel Frieders

I've never told anyone this, but once when I was visiting some friends in Santa Barbara, after my friends had all passed out, I went next door and sipped mushroom tea with an elderly lady who played the ukulele. She didn't speak much, and I wasn't sure if she was too keen on the English language, but she had an incredible picking hand and her laugh remains burned into my psyche as one of the greatest things I've ever heard.

She actually seemed a shitload more normal after the tea took root, but for the first hour I had no idea how to communicate with her, nor could I really recall how I came to be sitting in her kitchen consuming hallucinogens out of an actual tea set. Regardless of how I managed to be sitting at her table and communicating with only facial expressions and laughs, I remember her stereo playing something I'd never heard, at a volume that wasn't conducive to actually hearing what it was.

When she put her uke down and lit another cigarette, I calmly reached across and turned up the volume enough to digest what was going on. shit was psych-rock-wacky in a way I've never really had the patience to appreciate. All at once it sounded like a dozen musicians were going on about a delicious vegan sausage recipe and at the same time harping on the current state of officiating in the NBA. It made no sense, and it was actually tough on the gut like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, but there were these moments where everything made sense, and inside of these moments faint glimpses of beauty.

No it wasn't some profound moment of understanding reality as a series of interpretations of individual projections, but the music hit me for a few seconds before returning to its original anarchy. If I had to explain it to someone who didn't know what I meant, I'd say it was like hearing System Of A Down or Mars Volta for the first time and not getting it until shit just gets fucking gorgeous and you melt like a fucking Irishman at an open bar wedding. The dichotomy or juxtaposition of strange and all over the place with perfectly placed amazeballed bliss was fucking ridiculous.

The Warlords of Rock N Roll Thunder And Lightning, on their latest EP titled Act 1: The Dr. Kawalsky Files, have that same type of shit going on. It's fucking insanity until it's not, it's all over the fucking place until it's not, it's chaotic and rebellious until it's fucking smooth and damn near fucking sensual.

The horns on Into Me Out Of You are stressful and grating, until they announce your arrival at that place in your brain you call comfortable, screaming "I JUST CLEANED THE shit OUT OF YOUR BONG" and then you're all "thanks horns" and the comfort works its way up your bowels and on into your belly belly. The Dr. Kawalsky Files continue in this fashion, almost forcing you to turn it off the first time through, and just when you're about to kick the fucking stereo it dawns on you that you're half erect and already googling "white cotton panties". It's quite enjoyable now that I know I'm actually listening to a collective fucking roller coaster, but where the seats vibrate, there's a fucking twizzlers dispenser in the arm rest and the thoughts in your mind sound like you but if you had Morgan Freeman's voice.

Dan Finkel and TWORNRTAL are some fucking crazy ass muthafuckers, and while the song I'm Trash is my current favorite, the entire fucking EP is ridiculously fucking addictive. I would recommend listening and not touching the fucking stereo through the first full listen, as the only way the amazeballed bliss can poke through is if you're not expecting it.

The Warlords of Rock N Roll Thunder And Lightning are reach around handies that sing Monkees' songs in your ear in Russian.