Jean-Paul Sartre said “hell was other people”. As an arrogant, obnoxious and cantankerous philosopher, whose razor sharp grasp of convoluted academic concepts was inversely proportional to his emotional intelligence, he’d know.
Sartre wouldn’t have liked Don Fernando and their pounding stoner rock riffs, even a little bit. But who gives a shit what Sartre thinks? Especially when the title track of Don Fernando’s new album, Haunted by Humans kicks in, replete with fuzz-drenched licks and emphatic vocal pleas, or even when you’re whisked off to another world by Cosmic Psychos amphetamine-spiked rock of Running and Hiding. You can hear Soundgarden pounding away in the distance in Why?, and If You Say So throws back to a time when Kiss eschewed gratuitous self-congratulation marketing in favour of riffs hotter than Satan’s bedroom heater.
On Side of the Road, Rutger Hauer’s psychotic protagonist in The Hitcher bludgeons Black Sabbath within an inch of its life; Flight of the Unknown takes a journey into Led Zeppelin’s hippie-metal territory. Motherload puts its hands around your throat, locks into a groove and refuses to let go and Now You Know doesn’t mince words or licks in giving you a metal rock lesson. One thing that can be gleaned from Observation is that Don Fernando approach rock’n’roll like William Perry exchanging pleasantries with an unsuspecting Dallas Cowboy running back, while Older might be we’re all going, but Don Fernando is still in the prime of its existence.
BY PATRCK EMERY
