“Welcome to the land where the brainwashed rule the dust,” goes the first line of Moon Coven’s first album, the hypnotic “Amanita Kingdom,” acting as an appropriate if arcane introduction to the band’s shape and sound. For listeners on the quest for a more vivid than vicious realm of mushroom-fueled riffs, amplification and ice-cold lunar hymns … thy kingdom come.
Could it be that we’ve been at least slightly brainwashed by the efforts put forth by the rulers of this kingdom, the heretofore unknown group of Sabbath-summoning Swedes who built this “Amanita Kingdom”? Without question. However one defines the magick born of Malmö that runs through the collective veins of Moon Coven, it’s clear that we’ve been full-on mesmerized over the course of many, many dozens of spins, over the course of waking up for days in a row with the album’s heavy, hummable and heavily hummable melodic moments bouncing freely through our brain, before any light even enters our eyes.
Of course, what we consider a dream could just as easily be seen as a nightmare, depending on the visions one sees when the light of the sun bends and breaks across the face of the Moon Coven. They say one ape’s trash is another ape’s treasure, and your willingness to scale the castle walls of “Amanita Kingdom” may vary. Moon Coven seem to travel in an orbit of the middle way, perhaps too heavy for daintiest devotees of Donovan, perhaps not heavy enough for those whose sole aim is to ascend the “Dopethrone.” This merging of differences seems to reveal itself even in the album’s cover, beauty in a Baphomet pose. Despite this – or, perhaps more accurately, because of this – we find “Amanita Kingdom” to be a perfectly satisfying sonic prayer, Moon Coven divine deliverers of doom. Long may they reign.
“Amanita Kingdom” by Moon Coven is out now from Transubstans Records. Granite House Records has vinyl copies in the U.S.
“You must remember, too, that the experience is safe (at the very worst, you will end up the same person who who entered the experience), and that all of the dangers which you have feared are unnecessary productions of your mind. Whether you experience heaven or hell, remember that it is your mind which creates them. Avoid grasping the one or fleeing the other. Avoid imposing the ego game on the experience.”
– “The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead,” by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (Citadel Press, 1964).
Revolt of the Apes 
I dig it. It reminds me a bit (this song at least so far) of a little Sea of Green, hint of Alice in Chains, and some slowed down fu Manchu.