Blind Dog – Captain Dog Rides Again (Meteor City) www.meteorcity.com

Ahh, the great and noble Cap’n Dog is back from his wanderings in the imaginary deserts of Sweden to give us the Good Word and the Easy Riff. Blind Dog, like many of their buzzing brethren, wear their influences on their long black Kyuss and Sabbath sleeves, and you’d pretty much be splitting hairs by pointing out the minute differences between these cats and similar dope riffers in Jersey, or Hamburg, or Toronto. However, much like that pizza that Turbonegro like, Blind Dog are simply better at what they do than most. I mean, you’ve had pizza, baby, but not quite like this. Joakim Thell’s riffs seem lifted from Ancient stone tablets placed there by cosmic astronauts, and Tobias Nelson’s vocals are classic, in the Chris Cornell stadium burning sense. Lyrically, the Dog that Does Not See seem a little freaked out that the US is bombing the Jihad out of every country that pisses us off, which is infinitely more interesting than the usual “Yeti on a Dune Buggy, cruising the Cortex of the Universal Ractetrack” junk. (Oh, and don’t worry, Blind Dog, we got no beef with the Swedes. Just take it easy with the goddamn death metal bands, and you’ll be fine.) Now stripped down to a steaming power-trio, Blind Dog are state of the art mind melters, and if you only buy one “stoner rock” record this year (yeah, right, like yr only gonna buy one, ya dope fiend), than this is the big daddy Cadillac of ‘em all. Smoking, in every sense of the word.