Emerging from the kaleidoscopic corners of Australia’s underground psych rock scene, Night Rites deliver Nine Of Swords — a record so warped and scorched it feels like it was pressed under a peyote sun at the trashcan end of the Mojave. Fueled by dark mysticism and cosmic fuzz, the album unravels like a sprawling tarot reading, equal parts introspective voyage and electric ritual. With influences ranging from The Velvet Underground to The Dead Skeletons, Night Rites summon a sound that is at once thunderously hypnotic and emotionally raw, blurring the lines between revelation and hallucination.
Across its eight tracks, Nine Of Swords cuts deep with echo-laden pagan fuzz, reverse-flood rhythms, and vocals that sound as if they were conjured inside a haunted kiln. One moment, you’re drifting through astral states on “Inter(QUAA)lude,” the next you’re dragged knee-deep into skronk-bog sludge, chanting with abandon to “Black Diamond” like a cultist at a Dead Moon séance. The record pulses with cinematic intensity: looping riffs, droning organs, and reverb-drenched mantras that hover in the liminal space between dream and disillusionment. Somehow, Night Rites have bottled the jagged, glass-chewing live throb that once left basement kids blinking Morse code through the feedback haze back in ’23.
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