I don’t think epic even captures how grand The Occultation of Light is. I don’t think it is even in the same ballpark. There is the music of John Williams scoring a soundtrack which sports an ambitious journey, and then there is Mondo Drag spiraling through different progressions that pump up listeners as if they were spiking their punch with amphetamines with jam band tactics.
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And they really know how to mess with your adrenaline. “In Your Head (Part I & II) slowly builds up the crushing motif by enlarging how many instruments are throwing it at your ears until they pull out just when the climax of the song strikes. The rest of the song is a smooth ride led by a jazzy guitar and creeping synthesizers that get washed away with airy vocals. Their ability to take the theme of a song and umbrella it underneath one ambitious melody is churned out again and again throughout the 43 minute record.
Every track finds Mondo Drag being very minimalistic vocal wise. Often times they don’t make an appearance until you are long sedated, dragging through the last minute. A few times their is more to be heard and done with them, such as “Initiation” or “Ride The Sky” which fuse psychedelic and classic rock together with chunky grooves and straight forward beats. The added guitar solos only bring more to the tunes with their inventive additions to the rather luscious music.
Not every song is warm and seductive, with “Rising Omen” keeping with the name and being extremely ominous and creepy with its musical texture (thus the Omen). Still, the organs and other instruments swirling around the discordant guitar riff makes it all the more dissonant and ominous to listen to. And to top it all off, “The Eye” closes the album as if propelling the listener into an ’80s horror movie scored by Mondo Drag themselves.
