Texan Psych Rock masters Linus Pauling Quartet will release their eighth studio album 'Bag of Hammers' on Homeskool Records on September 18th. They have a running "Bongs of Power" theme throughout their music, which parodies a story by Brit fantasy author Michael Moorcock (who penned lyrics for Hawkwind in the past).
If you take a hit from both Bongs of Power at once (The Great Singularity), you will become all powerful... Even the album artwork featuring an Amazon clad in a chainmail bikini is a nod to sci-fi/fantasy and Dungeons and Dragons "with a sense that women can be a lot stronger than they are often given credit for."
The Linus Pauling Quartet is making psych rock for more than 19 years! They're a seminal part of the legendary Texas psych scene (Roky Erickson, The Mike Gunn, Charalambides, The Red Krayola, etc.) and site Britain's The Bevis Frond as a huge influence. They've played with Daniel Johnston, among others, and played multiple Terrastocks. They will also release a career retrospective 3 CD box-set later this year. In short, they're the biggest psych band you've probably never heard of.
Magnet had this to say about the band's 2000 LP 'Ashes in the Bong of God', "… a 2,500-microdot dose of conceptual zig-zaggery so daunting that Roger Dean would get a hernia trying to sketch the album sleeve. Imagine Captain Beefheart’s magic Band “reworking†Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother right on the cusp of the Rapture. Those gurgling sounds? The aforementioned diety’s chortles of amusement at the humans’ plight."
Check the clay-mazing video for lead single 'Crom' here. The band painstakingly created this video themselves over the course of seven months.