Here's Dead Meadow's recipe for success: Float dreamy detached vocals over plutonium-heavy Sabbathoid riffs. Then, punctuate from time to time with guitar solos that recall everyone from Jimmy Hendrix to the Bevis Frond. Voila! It's a simple idea, like punching a few holes in the side of a soda can to make a pipe-but in the capable paws of guitarist Jason Simon, bassist Steve Kille, and drummer Stephen McCarty, it's a hell of a lot more effective. Shivering King and Others, the trio's third slab of solidified smoke, is a whole lot trickier than it sounds on paper, though-more like a souffln a makeshift smoking utensil.

For one thing, the band is savvy enough to back off on the weapons-grade riffage from time to time and offer some other day-glo beaker from their cornucopia of psychedelic delights. "Everything's Going On" drifts like bong smoke over a small town love-in in a way that recalls Spacemen 3 at their most focused. And the somewhat acoustic "Me and the Devil Blues" could easily provide the cornerstone for a sci-fi spaghetti western daytime TV sex epic soundtrack.

But it's when they hit the "heavy as f***"" button, as on album opener "I Love You Too," that Dead Meadow glow the brightest. And what's most surprising about the album-and the band-is that Simon's fiery, convoluted solos are far more than mere exercises in proficiency, to the extent that they're statements in the grand sixties guitar hero tradition. Who'da thunk?