On January 1, 2020, most people were recovering from their New Year’s revelry. Few had a suspicion that in a few short months the world was going to go into both a meltdown and a lockdown. It was at the beginning of this storm that FUZZRIDERS, a Stoner Metal foursome out of Sardinia, Italy released their self-titled EP debut on that day. Bad timing, you might say. Delay followed delay. The world reeled. The world recovered. And now, some five years later, the band is releasing their debut full-length album, I Like It, via Electric Valley Records.

FUZZRIDERS the Italian foursome is not to be confused with FUZZRIDER the Greek trio. Both are Stoner groups. Both are good. One has an ‘s,’ the other doesn’t. But I’m guessing somewhere down the road someone’s going have to budge. Or, who knows, they could team up, do gigs together, and combine T-shirt designs that would celebrate both bands at half the cost. Win-win.

At any rate, I Like It from FUZZRIDERS with an ‘s’ comprises nine fat tracks of Stoner Metal bliss. Think KYUSS but without the California desert. Think FU MANCHU but without cars. The cover says Philip K. Dick meets Michael Moorcock, but there isn’t any discernable sci-fi or fantasy vibe in the actual tracks. In fact, there’s no real unifying theme that I could pick up on except for cowbells and fuzz. Even the title, I Like It, is fairly ambiguous. You get the feeling that they went with that title as a ploy to get algorithms to push them to the top. I mean, why not?

Best features of the album are two-fold: Bonettu’s infectious riffs and Carrasco’s sick drum work. Both will keep you revved. Standout tracks for me include “Sometimes” which works the scales like a desert sidewinder. It also has a raw analog vibe and more heat than Mojave asphalt in July. Next up on my list is “I’m Rotten” which oscillates from nasty groove to Doom sludge then back to nasty groove over and over again. It’s the most distinctive track on the album. I also had strong feels for “Can You Dance” which would set Christpher Walken’s heart aflutter. Cowbell overload.

Can’t say that FUZZRIDERS is terrible innovative. They play the Stoner Metal card hard and stick to their hand. Nothing wrong with consistency, though, and track-by-track I Like It is consistently good. In fact, I quite like it.