Glitter Wizard (USA)

This band of California rifflords pillage the best of vintage hard rock while keeping their laser eyes on the future, creating a unique brand of oddball psychedelia. Their onstage performance is a glammed-up force to be reckoned with and they've been taking their act on the road from the West Coast all the way to Europe.

The Philadelphia trio Ecstatic Vision have toured with metal acts like YOB and Enslaved, and they’re signed to the metal-associated label Relapse Records, and they look like a metal band. But Ecstatic Vision’s forthcoming five-song debut, Sonic Praise, only occasionally intersects with metal, and when it does, it resembles bands like Hawkwind or Monster Magnet or Earthless.These are tripped-out, sun-baked, cloud-high psychedelic jams drawing from free jazz, Krautrock, and Afrobeat, resulting in music that lives up to the lofty promises made in both the band’s name and their album’s title. To the extent this stuff might be conflated, confused, or associated with metal, it comprises one of the best metal albums of 2015.More aptly, though, it recalls the old Spacemen 3 album title (and mission statement), Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To. (To be fair, I have no idea if any of the guys in Ecstatic Vision have ever so much as considered a single toke; their music, though, suggests they have vast experience with all number of hallucinogens.)