The use of psychedelics can be a good thing. When applied right, the approach is mind expanding, and can result in abstract and accidentally brilliant moments.

Yet when used incorrectly, and without moderation, it’s dangerous.

It permanently can alter someone’s mental state and create a foreign environment without reason or bounds; the same can be said for its artistic effects.

But Gris Gris – which fittingly takes its name from a voodoo ritual that uses powders, herbs and oils in moderation for good and in excess for harm – doesn’t understand the importance of self-governance.

Front man and band Svengali, Greg Ashley, fails to realize there can be too much of a good thing. By smothering tracks, often beyond recognition, he stays interesting for all the wrong reasons. The way a car accident is too gruesome to ignore, his song-writing at times is unavoidably bad.

The overuse of pointless effects and clamor bogs down songs that are distant and droning already. The try-anything jam sessions may have been fun to record, but they certainly aren’t fun to listen to. And the brief moments of promising rock ’n’ roll tucked between stifling noises and chants don’t make up for the excessive ruckus.

Only the peppy “Down With Jesus,” lamenting, doo wop “Medication #4” and rocker “Year Zero” deliver on the potential of psychedelic rock.

It’s this promise of the genre and a lack of follow-through on the better characteristics of psychedelia, that places Gris Gris distantly behind peers who understand how to fuse subtle throwback tributes with a contemporary approach.