Imaad Wasif

The Voidist

[4/5]



Up until last year’s Strange Hexes, the debut from ex-Yeah Yeah Yeahs touring guitarist Imaad Wasif (along with the formidable Two Part Beast), psychedelic rock suffered from a serious case of heavy metal-lite. All a Hessian had to do was slather the tempo in molasses, manifest a few extended leads and slap the Bonham groove on any old fit of homogenized riffing. Add tie-dye shirts and a fresh thicket of pubescent beard tuft and voila! Psych-rock! Lucky for us, Wasif comes devoid of the packaging, instead purveying a knack for making (gulp!) Eastern-influenced guitar rock for an audience husking to hear something new.



The Voidist, Wasif’s second solo effort, swims in Shankar-twangy modulation as evidenced on “Fangs,” a fuzzy love opus slithering in a cobra-crouch post-rock dirge. His Age of Aquarius acoustic meanderings blossom to maturity on the lush, trippy nostalgia train of “Widow Wing.” Where Hexes reveled in a sludgier sentiment, all the while anchoring Wasif’s emotional yearnings, The Voidist opts, for the most part, not to disguise anything. It arrives bare-chested and howling, as on the album’s highlight “Return To You”–an opus fit to challenge any track on Jeff Buckley’s Grace, romantic serenades and all, until the rubber falls off the wheel and Wasif’s repeated “Be still my heart” chorus morphs into a New Delhi-meets-Tokyo guitar shuffle. The tone shifts here, exposing a rebounding Wasif screaming, “Don’t betray a love that’s true in your mind.” It is here we get a sneak peek at a soul on the verge of capsizing; a troubadour filled to the brim with artistic validation, but bereft of the knowledge that he knows everything.



The Voidist’s closer, “Razorlike,” ebbs and flows within a theological fantasy, riding a crest of crunchy guitars, a snippet of wah-wah and a teaser of a solo, before it retreats again into an introspective, melodic interlude with Wasif’s pitch-perfect vocal dynamics wafting freely in the reverb. It ends, as only it could, within the thrashing throes of a major mind-melt of controlled metal chaos.(TEE PEE) Ryan J. Prado



GO DOWNLOAD: “Return To You”