• Newsletter Sign up
• Subscribe
• Back Issues
• Sample Issue
• Contact Us

Introducin g ...

From page 16 of Classic Rock Magazine July 2007

Cover of July 2007 issue.

★ TITAN

This prog/psych rock instrumental four-piece from New York inhale the likes of Blue Cheer, Uriah Heep and Deep Purple and want you to party like it’s 1972.

WORDS: JOHN DORAN

“Leigh Stephens from Blue Cheer as a guitarist speaks to me. It’s heavy guitar thunder. When they play now it’s not as freaked out and they’re slower because they’re, like, old dudes, but in a way that just contributes to the heaviness. After we played with them in New York I was one of the few people who wanted to go and hang out with them backstage.” So says Josh Anzano, six-string slinger with heavy psychedelic instrumental band Titan. Anzano wasn’t even a glint in his daddy’s eye in the late 60s, when Blue Cheer we at their loudest and liveliest, but no one seems to have told him that.

“Dickie Peterson was going on about stuff,” he continues, turning his attention to Blue Cheer’s bassist/vocalist. “He was really angry about The Doobie Brothers and how one of them became a cop. Then he started shouting about Gregg Allman’s brother, who was his manager, getting him busted for all that blow on tour. He got really angry and started shouting: ‘Fuck Gregg Allman’s brother! That shit ain’t rock’n’roll!’. I couldn’t decide whether it was pathetic or absolutely great,” he laughs. But secretly you suspect he thinks it’s amazing.

Titan’s first album proper, A Raining Sun Of Light And Love, For You And You And You , is a massive slab of fuzzed up, technical but heavy instrumental prog that sounds like it was recorded inside one of the great pyramids. The album starts with a joke of sorts: some miserable folk chanting that sounds like it’s coming from a crofter’s cottage 50 years ago slowly gives way to the Titan sound, which is made up of shredding guitars, chunky, Bonhamesque drum breaks, and a thick sludge of overdriven keyboards. Titan are saying: yeah, we might well be playing music that’s 35 years old, but we want you to hear it with fresh ears, like you were hearing it for the first time.

“Yeah, that’s kind of the goal,” Anzano agrees. “It’s obvious that we lift a lot from the 70s, but that’s because that’s the golden era of rock, prog and psychedelic rock. That was when the best ideas came into fruition. The thing is, it’s fucking 2007, so it’s dishonest to sound as 70s as possible. I came from a punk and hardcore background, and essentially I can only play as if I’m in a punk group. So even if it’s progressive music we’re still keeping it fast, heavy and brutal.” • A Raining Sun Of Light And Love, For You And You And You is out now on Tee Pee Records.