Infected Mushroom – Vicious Delicious

(Stomp Entertainment)

As a general rule I’m not a huge fan of psy-trance, and it would seem to me that Israeli duo Infected Mushroom has cornered the market in this genre. Years ago I had a friend try and tell me Classical Mushroom (2000) was the record that would get me into psy-trance, but my music taste at the time didn’t allow me to delve into it.

From what I hear Infected Mushroom evolved from pure psy-trance in the late 90s into more accessible trance and electronica post the 2003 album Converting the Vegetarians.

And now here I am faced with the prospect of reviewing Infected Mushroom’s latest album, Vicious Delicious, with a fresh, non-biased ear – and I have to tell you it really impressed me.

After having a few of the party faithful quickly poo poo this album as being commercial trance and uninspiring, I was taken aback by the use of some alluring Middle Eastern flavours mixed with metal riffs and driving beats (Heavyweight), and by some even heavier tunes (Eat it Raw).

In fact, I was supremely surprised at the amount of metal riffs that Vicious Delicious contained… which leads me to believe that Infected Mushroom are indeed trying to attract a different audience to the loyal band of acid hippies and hardcore trancers.

Forgive Me has a very radio friendly aspect to it, which is not a bad thing, and the opening track Becoming Insane is going to be my new “It’s time to get motivated” song.

While there are a couple of moments (the start of Suliman and four minutes into the title track) where this experimentation verges on Euro trash you’d find in a club in the red-light district of, well, any European country, I think Infected Mushroom has really done well. They’ve genuinely gone to great lengths to create something new without losing too much of their psy-trance style.

Everyone benefits from a chance to listen to something new from an outfit that’s trying something new. Vicious Delicious may give you that little extra bounce if all the music you have is starting to sound passé.

Vicious Delicious is available now through Stomp Entertainment.