Album Review: Jupiter Cyclops – Age of the UFOnaut

It’s one thing to appreciate the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM). But it’s quite another to learn from the style, to take what’s most valuable about it and apply it to one’s own original music. Yet that’s what Phoenix-based Jupiter Cyclops has managed to do. On the group’s second long-player, Age of the UFOnaut, the four-piece outfit serves up its trademark uber-heavy rock (think Black Sabbath and Deep Purple) leavened with the more modern approach of later, more intense artists (Iron Maiden, for example).

Intricate yet lockstep riffage is the order of the day. The band operates with thunderous power and unified purpose; the four musicians plays as if they’re all part of one seething, roaring musical organism. But what separates Age of the UFOnaut from standard-issue metal is the high quality of the vocals. No cookie-monster harsh vocals (if that’s your thing, well, sorry); instead, lead singer Aaron Peltz roars in a melodic manner that recalls – in manner if not texture – great hard rock vocalists like UFO’s Phill Mogg, Ian Gillan and, well, not-too-many others.

Sure, there’s the occasional pig-squeal guitar lick, but that metal signature is used sparingly, so its appearance will elicit a smile and/or nod rather than a groan. The riffs are razor-sharp displaying a pop sensibility (meant in the best sense of the term) that isn’t always found in metal. Jupiter Cyclops has the goods to play at a sludgy, doom/stoner pace, and/or to take things at a breakneck speed-metal full-throttle-ness. Instead the band takes the middle path, one that lets the songs breathe and develop while providing the kind of goodies that lovers of hard rock treasure.

The lyrics on Age of the UFOnaut traffic in common themes; song tiles like “Sinful Ways” and “Doomed” (the latter being perhaps the best of the album’s eight tunes) telegraph the band’s lyrical perspective – but the words are compelling enough to hold up on close listening. Jupiter Cyclops comes off as an atypically well-adjusted bunch of musicians: as the Sex Pistols might’ve said, they mean it, man, but they’re not those pissed-off guys in that rehearsal space down the block.

Age of the UFOnaut holds its own when placed alongside classics from metal masters of days gone by. Listeners who are on the hunt for new music that delivers the fire of the vintage stuff are advised to give Age of the UFOnaut a spin.