Drive By Wire - “Spellbound” album premiere - It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine

On February 23rd, desert rockers Drive By Wire will guide you into their psychedelic sound with the release of the new album “Spellbound” via Argonauta Records.
Today, It’s Psychedelic Baby is glad to premiere the entire album and unleash an exclusive track by track commentary.

Pre-order “Spellbound” here: http://hyperurl.co/DriveByWire-NewCD

“Glider”

This is a magical song in which Simone’s voice blends in with the primal rhythm of the drums. We used a reverb on the vocals that takes you back to the best part of the seventies. We especially love the drive that the choruses have, kind of straightforward uptempo psychedelic rock… like a glider hovering above, a cloudless sky…

In the second part of the song; where that guitar riff kicks in on its own, Alwin (the guitarist) had the idea to mess around with an Octave pedal, so it gives a nice “in your face” 70’s hardrock vibe.

“Where Have You Been”

The first single of the album, also released with a video… maybe the most bluesy and retro song of the album. Blues-rock with heavy Black Sabbathy. This song has combined all what we were looking for. The groove, the retro sound, the psychedelicjazzypoetry interlude, the hardrock heavy ending, with the strong vocal hook, and thundering stoner guitar-riff pounding away.

“Mammoth”

Hits you in your face like Iggy and the Stooges used to do. We’ve played this song often on concerts, so that’s where we perfected it.

“Apollo”

Started as a jam, Zerb (the bass player) just played the bass line, and we all started jamming away, the song was written in an hour. Jerome (the drummer) had kind of the Doors feeling. Inspired by our last tour through Greece, where we played big cities, but also smaller mountain towns. Because of farmers on strike blocking the main road through the Olympus mountain range, we had to take all these small paths over and through this mountain range, talked to a priest who was living in solitude for 6 months every year up on the mountain… and finally, 3 hours later than intended, we ended up at the club, played a great set, and had a wild night with the fans.

“Blood Red Moon”

The song started out when Alwin used some sort of weird de-tuning… we wrote and recorded this song in the winter of 2016, and released it around December together with a video where Simone is standing ankle deep in mud… that was a cold day, haha… About the lyrics: “Blood Red Moon”, it is considered an omen, some believe an omen of bad things will come, but we think it is an omen of change, and if that change is turned to good or bad, that is decided by your own actions.

“Superoverdrive”

Step on the overdrive, now your senses coming alive… The feeling which is hard to describe, when you are on stage, plug in, and the crowd gets crazy, but also when you are watching your favorite band live and you forget all about yourself and lose yourself in the music. One of our more uptempo songs… sound wise also the most 90’s grunge inspired song, with distorted vocals… and the end-part is one of the most technical things we ever did… took us half a day in the studio to nail that part.

“Van Plan”

Well, listen to this song, close your eyes and you’re instantaneously on a road trip in a van through the desert. This song started out as a jam. Simone insisted on bongo’s. This song sort of wrote itself.

“Lost Tribes”

A song with a lot of soul, meaningful… about the whole Dakota Access Pipeline situation and Standing Rock protests… The pipeline and its intended crossing of the Missouri River is considered to constitute a threat to the region’s clean water and to ancient burial grounds. A shame how holy grounds and cultures have to give away if there’s money to be made.

“Devil’s Fool”

A damn heavy song… some sort of blend between metal and Motown soul (listen to the backing vocals, sort of gospel like backing choir there… Hope to perform that one live with a real choir some day… wouldn’t that be awesome?!).

“Lifted Spirit”

Has a dreamy beginning, but takes you right into a darker place and gets even more darker and heavy towards the end straight into metal riffs. The lyrics and the music take you to a higher ground. A song about loss, about personal demons to fight… where will it end…

“Spellbound”

All alone, just by yourself and you are fighting the elements. This is a song filled with raw power but it’s also mystical and in a quest for freedom, climbing up those high cliffs, but at the same time feeling the freedom, you feel free as a mountain bird. Music is a really powerful force… a spell by itself… especially the more psychedelic rhythmic music taps directly into a very primitive part of the human brain. So we called this album Spellbound, because we believe it relates to that primitive tribal place inside ourselves, if you open your mind to this album, it will take you on a musical trip… and leaves you Spellbound…