Temple Fang's fantastic debut is the story of a record that almost never happened, shelved for months due to pandemic and personal reasons. Luckily, the band decided to finish and release this mammoth of melodic, trippy and spiritual heavy psychedelic rock for the world to hear. After a limited vinyl run quickly sold out, Stickman is proud to issue a 2CD version of this album! Temple Fang was formed in Amsterdam in the wake of the dissolution of bassist Dennis Duijnhouwer's previous band Death Alley. Joining with guitarist Jevin De Groot, bassist Ivy van der Veer and drummer Jesper van den Broeke, the band started gaining steam in 2020 with a slew of Dutch gigs culminating in the album "Live at Merlyn". The band's powerful and tight live sound, and the fact that their first album was a live recording, was an impressive statement about the transcendental and improvisational nature of their performances. Fresh out of the gate, Temple Fang had hit upon a fresh and ambitious sound, crafting songs that run upwards of 20 minutes while exploring the outer limits of psychedelic heavy rock. However, not everything ran smoothly for the band. While working on preproductions mixes for a debut album, the band's drummer left the fold and the country plunged back into lockdown. With morale running low, the band decided to shelve the recordings indefinitely, unsure if Temple Fang would continue as a band at all. When returning to the studio to mix some pre-lockdown live recordings, the band's sound engineer ambushed them with a new idea to take the live tracks and use them as a base to build a "proper" album onto. After months, the band had emerged with Fang Temple, a unique hybrid live-studio record with all the power of a live show and the polish of a studio album. As with their previous album, Fang Temple comprises four extremely long songs hovering around the 20 minute mark, each of which is a different journey, from lysergic grooves to blistering space rock, from blissed out melody to walls of dense sonic atmosphere. Fans of forward-thinking music will get this instantly and enjoy many spins. We sure have.