Artist: Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno
Album: Iao Chant From The Cosmic Inferno
Label: Ace Fu Records
Tracks: 1
Length: 51:25
Review By: Jacob Gehman

Once upon a time, in a land and dimension unknown to most mortals, there existed a bard. He wandered the 16 corners of his planet strumming a guitar and singing folk ballads about Mother Nature and bedsores. No matter how nasty the bedsores were, the songs were always pretty and struck a joyous note in the heart of those who happened to hear them.

The bard spent many-a-year of his life just drifting from place to place, always composing new songs. In one of the smaller towns he was playing on a street corner with his guitar case open in front of him to collect money from those who passed by him. The case was fairly full since most people in this other time and dimension were much nicer than the folk in your own.

The owner of a recording studio and label heard the bard playing on the street and immediately saw his greatness. A quick conversation with the man revealed his willingness to record an album. His first and only album hit the masses like a truckload of bricks. It out sold every other album month after month. It took three years for another record to outsell it.

The record label owner, seeing money signs in his eyes, wanted to make more money by expanding his market. So he released the album a second time, only to our own time and dimension. Unfortunately, the transfer between the two dimensions was not kind on the original recording. The music smashed together into one long, tedious track. Gone were the folk leanings and in it’s place was a repetitive rock album, not too unlike The Mars Volta, only with randomly spaced chanting instead of singing.

Inspired, the label changed the artwork into something reminiscent of 70s drug culture with weird sexual and religious icons. For, indeed, the main market for this kind of repetitive droning are those who want to hole up in a dark room lit only by scented candles and smash their brains with various illegal substances. Not an activity this reviewer or website recommends.

**Note**
This review was written while the author was listening to the album, which has it’s own weird, hypnotic effect. While he apologizes for the ambiguity of the review, he would like to point out that the review is no less ambiguous than the music it is actually representing. In addition, the review is not claiming to represent any real people, as it is a parable of sorts. The story and the people (and their situation and decisions) in it are completely from my mind. The music description, while technically from my mind, represents my opinion of what is actually on the album.