Band : Blue Aside
Album Title : The Orange Tree
Label : Hydro-Phonic
Distributor :
Release Date : 2010
Review : CD

Former AelionRace and Palace In Thunderland band mates, Adam Abrams and Matt Netto, decided to combine their musical abilities and form a unique doom metal band. They then got their good friend Joe Twomey on board and the line up was complete, Blue Aside was born.
The Orange Tree is a brilliant, but relatively short album that will take many by surprise. Each of the five songs (5-9minutes) is an adventure in cosmic metal, featuring spacey arrangements and the vibe in question is Rush-prog, Hawkwind-space, Voi Vod-Outer Limits,  Yob-sludge, Sabbath-doom and Sleep-groove qualities which can't be faked, and which Blue Aside’s music possesses in ampleness.
The opener "The traveller of time and space" already had blown me away at first listen, starting out with a great riff and spaced-out guitarsolo, which brings you to the brink of tears, Adam’s axe style and riffing bound works well with this type of music. He can be mellow and soulful as well as heavy and intense, but everyone in the band is talented and each add their own style to create this music trip.The brilliant vocal performance of  “Otis’ sun”, the powerful majesty of "Orange eyes" or the epic proportions of "The inevitable journey", they all are great examples for the class of this band. “Black rays” is the only song I just cannot seem to get into (at least for more than half of it). The mixing of growling from hell and poisoned honey singing really set them apart from most bands nowadays.
As mentioned earlier Blue Aside have produced something really special, something that does not deserve to be labelled into one single category. Recommended.

90/100

Cosmicmasseur.