Argonauta Records recording artists DENIZEN (2004) hail from Sète and Montpellier, France (that's in Europe). The music scene from Barcelona, Spain around the gigantic half-moon bay to Toulon, France is a righteous scene, mates. These bearded partisans are one foot into the stoner rock and the other foot into the alt-rock birkenstocks. Nous verrons ce que nous verrons, oui?

"Shadow Dancer" wails in with Fabien sounding a bit like Josh Kiszka. It works here and lifts the somewhat vanilla tunesmith up a notch. "Among the Trees" #2 is my fav track with drummer Andreas laying down a gummy off-kilter rhythm alternating in 4/4 and 2/4 time signatures - all kinda groove goin' down here mates and I hope I have me count correct. This is one loopy beat and covers some ground until the last 40 seconds when the song's gears are shifted. I wish I could understand the lyrics but in all honesty, I have a hard time with most lyrics unless the vocal mix is impeccable. "Ears Wide Opened" (I see what you did there !) somewhat expands on the trancecore vibe some these tracks emit and has some nice hooky guitar turnarounds ... these cats are not afraid to put a metronome company out of business with their expanded measures of different time signatures and DENIZEN do this trick swimmingly. I do not hear that musical license often lately or maybe I don't get out enough. "The Beast" circles back around into stoner rock land with a gooey head nodding pace and syrupy guitar backstopping the song's verses. "Mandrake is Everywhere" takes us back into the swampy territory the first track of this release pulled us down into with some tenor vocals before shifting into another gear then returning to the song's main pedestrian guitar riff.

"White Flamingo" colors inside the punk lines of MÖTORHEAD to some effect and the tune gets the old foot tapping along with the nouvelle vague chorus "White Fla Min Go". Track number 8 "Deaf Taint" apes JANES ADDICTION and TOOL and sees the lads pulling it off without scattering the buckshot too much; it sounds righteous with the big pounding guitar riffs looping away in the 300+ millisecond delay ether. "Punch Out" has more of the afore mentioned time sig shifting before ending this release with "Tomahawk".

Fabien raises the caterwaul proper with his shouted tenor vocals while Yann brings on the sludge with his Rat pedal fuzz chomping on top of the booming bass lour that Colin throws down. There are some bang-on THE JESUS LIZARD moments and these moments remind me of just how much I miss the days when THE JESUS LIZARD walked this planet. And I like when DENIZEN channels the musical chemistry of THE JESUS LIZARD style of post-rock in their own not quite unpredictable but nonetheless still odd sounding and beautiful deportment. Nobody does it like the French and DENIZEN shows this through these 10 songs. Jolly good show¡