Black Elephant – The Fall Of The Gods

by Mark 'Yeti' Richard · October 28, 2024

Black Elephant is a heavy psychedelic blues rock band from Italy. They just released their latest album, The Fall Of The Gods on October 18th 2024, on Small Stone Records. This is the band’s third record on the acclaimed label (fourth overall), the other two releases are 2018’s Cosmic Blues and 2020’s Seven Swords. The lineup consists of: Alessio Caravelli on lead vocals and lead guitar, Massimiliano Giacosa on rhythm guitar, Marcello De Stefanis on bass, and Simone Brunzu on the drums.

Leading up to the release of The Fall Of The Gods, I listened to both previous albums a lot in the last month or so to familiarize myself with Black Elephant. I really liked both Cosmic Blues and Seven Swords a lot and was excited to hear this one. I must admit, some psychedelic rock music gets too repetitive, messy, and overplayed for me to fully appreciate. However, Black Elephant does it right!

The album opens with “Mother Of The Sun, Pt.1”. It begins slowly with guitar and boasts a nice bass and drum groove. The song has a nice subtle build up into a fuzzy haze of distorted bliss, as the echoed vocals appear. The band then crank into “Go”, a cosmic blues style instrumental. The scorching lead guitar freak outs are integrated nicely with the rhythmic riffing and heavy drumming. It has a seventies style sound drenched in vintage distortion. The album’s title track “The Fall Of The Gods” is next. The six and a half minute song starts with clean guitar with percussive nuances and converges some psychedelic jamming elements with spoken vocals, which are buried in the mix. The loose sounding feel to the song adds a nice organic depth to the build up structure of the music. Spacy and airy guitar flourishes are present as the song progresses into a nice psychedelic head trip.

The fourth track called “Vedova Nera” might be my favorite song yet. Black Elephant expand the depth of their sound with this one. The tune starts with muted guitar picking which kicks into a nice heavy grooving rhythm. Alessio Caravelli’s vocals start off subdued and more laidback with the verses but picks up the intensity as the song moves into a heavier and fuzzy chorus part. The band are fluid in musical dynamics and subtleties which flow with the music perfectly. At around the 4:30 mark, Black Elephant mix in some cool tribal percussion followed by a pause with just muted picking. They immediately crank out some heavy groove with blazing guitar leads to finish off the song. The next couple of tracks are just under two minutes. “Se Chiudo Gli Occhi” is a slower chugging of a deranged and heavy riffing with more of Caravelli’s subtle singing. Then “Dissociale” comes in hot with a fury of intensity. It’s a hard rocking song, fueled with punk ferocity. Another cool thing about The Fall Of The Gods is the way the band mixes up the songs on the album. It keeps the music sounding fresh and interesting upon repeated listens. Black Elephant incorporates a good amount of the songs in their native Italian language also with certain song titles and lyrics. As is the case with the seventh track “Cuori Selvaggi”. The song starts off lightly with more laid back and melodic singing. When the rhythm kicks in, there are transient swirls of psychedelia mixed in with a solid backbone of Marcello De Stefanis’ fine bass playing and Simone Brunzu’s intricate drumming. The guitar playing of both Alessio Caravelli and Massimiliano Giacosa are also excellent and worth mentioning. They incorporate some Santana style clean picking along with glass shattering Hendrix-esc leads.

“Shadow” starts off a little more mellow and has an overall space laced aura about it. It’s a slow and bluesy number that has a nice chilled out feel throughout. The next song, “Jupiter” is even more mellow and punctuates all kinds of interesting guitar noises and sounds throughout. The song, an instrumental, is anchored by the rhythm section and colored with psychotropic audio hallucinations. The final cut on The Fall Of The Gods is another instrumental aptly called “Mother Of The Sun, Pt.2”. It’s got a heavy dose of seventies riff rock glory with a stampede of crushing riffs molded together to formulate a nice ending to a fantastic recording.

Black Elephant is a band that is really growing on me. A few months ago, I never heard of them before and now it’s practically all I wanna listen to. Great music is a slow brewing process of repeated listens, that grow and grow in time. The Fall Of The Gods is an album that really gets better upon each and every listen, as you hear things differently and more acutely each time. Black Elephant is a band that is creating some excellent music and The Fall Of The Gods is an exceptional album to start with.