It’s often with a fair degree of trepidation that I approach a body of music that is prefaced within the preassembled PR guff as transcending several musical genres. It serves to do a few things I guess, firstly it seeks to cover all it’s bases really from a potential demographic perspective. ‘
‘Hey guys and girls, if you really love Limp Bizkit, Cult of Luna, Bloodhound Gang, Car Bomb, Megadeth, Ion Dissonance, Anal Cunt and The Locust then THIS…is the album for you…’.
It may be a clumsy point, clumsily written, but you get the general drift. It’s like a game of Twister between the troupe of a Victorian travelling circus of so-called freaks with added bearded lady. It has a foot in so many camps, that it simply seeks to appease and appeal to all. Secondly, and probably more problematic in my humble opinion, is that those working with the band (and possibly the band themselves) have a schizophrenic/Jekyll and Hyde view of themselves and don’t quite know what style of music that they are serving up and so it’s with a degree of trepidation that I jump into this debut album by Belgium Black Metal, Dark Gaze, Sludge, Black Gaze, Post Rock Black Metal protagonists Mother.
Upon sliding under the surface of the album opener, it becomes immediate apparent, that Mother have alighted upon a genre that is bestrode by a modern day Talos (guess who watched Ray Harryhausen films over the festive period) towering over a burning city, pissing on the dying residents of the city he has just sacked for fun whilst simultaneously plundering their food stocks to really rub salt in their wounds. Of course, I am referring to the undoubted kings of this post rock landscape Isis (the band) who took the musical conventions of several genres, subjugated, and reinvented their component parts and changed heavy music as we knew it… forever. It may sound like hyperbole, and another excuse to extol the well-known virtues of a band very close to my heart, but it casts such a shadow over all aspects of this genre, it’s impossible not to conflate Isis into a review of anything close to an approximation of their music. In Mother’s defence though, there are moments on this debut album, that are pretty darn good.
When the tempo slows, and the rushing Black Metal cavalcade of screams and ten to the dozen drums, segues into denser, slower, and more reflective pastures, we have a band that know what they’re doing and have something shiny to offer up as a sacrament to the gods of this genre. It’s in these quieter, tranquil, and still moments, that Mother’s undoubted talent pours through the porous walls of sand that surround this body of work. It’s almost as if they are trying a little too hard at times and it seems to strangle their creativity, resulting in some of the songs sounded slightly derivative and by the numbers. But when the band ease down, such as on songs such as ‘I.II’, album closer ‘I.VII’ and album highlight ‘I.III’ (which recalls early Tool crossed with some aspects of Wolves in the Throne Room which might sound like a mistake to conflate those two very different bands, but it makes perfect sense when you listen to it) this album is progressive, and it becomes apparent that there is a musical diaspora at work here. When the songs are allowed to breath and expand like a deep-sea diver’s lungs, as he removes his breathing apparatus and gulps down his first salty breath of fresh air after a six-hour shift removing barnacles from an oil rig’s supporting structures, then this body of work really sings. The busy, one hundred mile an hour element of this album, seem shoehorned in, as an attempt to cast their appeal net far and wide. It’s the slower, heavier, chugging, dense elements of their songs that serve to create a more cohesive album overall.
This may seem that I am damming Mother with faint praise, but it’s during these musical highpoints that the album really takes hold. I acknowledge, that my slight bias against or lack of understanding thereof) certain aspects of the Black Metal genre tropes on show here, are impairing/informing my opinion but, I can only go with my heart and that is telling me that if you look closely enough, there are some real nuggets of gold to be found that recall bands such as Pelican, Ghost Bath and yes Isis. Exalted company indeed and if Mother can further develop and extrapolate on the core tenets that contrive to define aspects of this debut effort, then they may well be onto something.
(7/10 Nick Griffiths)
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