Six years on from Fu Manchu's last studio full-length, the SoCal desert-rock deities have returned as stony as ever. The group have just announced a new double album called The Return of Tomorrow, and are celebrating by premiering a faithfully fuzzed-out anthem called "Hands of the Zodiac."
Full of pummeling drums, psych-blitzed guitar solos, and perma-chill rasping from vocalist-guitarist Scott Hill, "Hands of the Zodiac" is the kind of Fu Manchu song that practically smells like germanium transistors and that bottle of STP you spilled in the back of your Trans Am.
Lyrically, Hill's waxing on an astrologically challenged pal, who might not be the Nostradamus he thinks he is. "He would look to the stars at night and ramble off all these weird predictions, none of which ever came true," Hill explained in a press release. "He would say 'Zodiac Hands' and face the palm of his hand at you. I would always try to remember the things he said and almost every line in the song is something he said."
The king-sized The Return of Tomorrow is split up into two sonic factions. LP1 — on which "Hands of the Zodiac" resides — is where Fu Manchu will be dialing up the distortion, while they'll be sidling into softer sounds in the back end.
Hill commented: "I figured we should do a double record with seven heavy fuzzy songs on one record and the other record six mellow(er) songs, fully realizing that maybe I'm the only person that likes to listen to music that way."
The Return of Tomorrow is due out June 14th, and available to pre-order through the band's own At the Dojo Records. You can peep the visualizer video for "Hands of the Zodiac" above.
