siLLy puPPy After only one EP (as Sons Of Kyuss) and three full albums KYUSS was running out of steam when they released their fifth and final offering ...AND THE CIRCUS LEAVES TOWN, which sounds like a perfect title for an ending of the great ride. Another lineup change would be the only album with Alfredo Hernandez on drums but he would go on to join Queens Of The Stone Age, the next step for Josh Homme and indeed this album sounds a lot like a transition between KYUSS and QofSA. The doomy fuzzed out riffs are a full stoner metal assault with a nonchalant laid back feel with lots of heavy riffing, tasty licks and bass, bass and more bass.

This album gets a bad rep for being inferior to the previous ones and granted it is not as perfect as “Welcome To Sky Valley” but it is a fun listen in its own right. It has one good track after another offers a few surprises along the way. The only thing I find irritating is the last track “Spaceship Landing” ends and then has several minutes of silence and then a tiny bit more then several more minutes of silence and then finally after 32 minutes an ending of depressive musical poetry lamenting about how time has come and gone. I guess a eulogy for the death of a great band.

Yes you can skip it but if you wanna hear the whole thing for the first time you have to sit through a bunch of silence and hear your own stupid thoughts and if you are as stoned as this music hopes you are then that could result in some totally messed up scene! Just for the record, no drugs were consumed in the writing of this review and you certainly don't need to go there to enjoy this music.

Kingcrimsonprog …And The Circus Leaves Town is the fourth and final studio album by legendary Desert/Stoner pioneers Kyuss. The album was released in 1995, just before the band split up prior to any significant touring in support of the album.

Featuring `Hurricane,’ and the single `One Inch Man,’ the album continues the band’s evolution from raw garage sounds to spacey, psychedelic numbers mixed with solid rockers.

No two Kyuss albums sound all that alike, but all retain a common theme of bassy sounds, 60s/70s rock influences and John Garcia’s vocal style. …And The Circus Leaves Town takes the band even further away from their debut and into some new territory altogether.

The band were on fire and the musicianship and performances are absolutely exemplary, which when combined with their best production job to date results in one fantastic record.

Standout tracks include material like `Catamaran,’ and `Spaceship Landing,’ which were impressive and ambitious, as well as the aforementioned `Huricane,’ and `One Inch Man,’ which keep the album’s rock credentials up.

Some Kyuss fans don’t rate this album just as highly as the two which came before it. Regardless, once you’ve tried those two albums jump straight into …And The Circus Leaves Town with both feet, you won’t be disappointed. Perhaps it cannot live up to the classic status of those two records, but it is still a brilliant album and well worth investigating.