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I’m devastated by the news.
Tomas’ drumming with MP has been so incredible. Like a dream, really. There have been some live peaks over the past years that have rivalled 1993/94 and 1997/98 in terms of intensity and magic. Save for 2020, which along with being a horrible year in general, had the worst setlists since 2001, ALL the other years since 2017 have had concerts that deserve “all-time classic” status. October/November 2017 had a whole host of them, November 2018, May 2019, the Blitz-run in November 2021… And I wouldn’t be surprised if we 20 years from now look back on the 2022 Cosmoctop! Over Europe-tour as their greatest ever in terms of musical elasticity.
Tomas made a dent in the Psychoverse and gave me a new emotional connection to the band. To me, he was the best of all worlds musically. He could play anything and make it sound urgent and vital. Sure, many drummers can “play” the songs, but after nearly 6 years in MP, Tomas had become them. I’m so grateful for everything he contributed, and will treasure the concerts I saw for the rest of my life.
It’s great that Bent and Snah just soldier on without missing a beat (pun intended), but what a loss…
HOME OF THE BRAVE
Wooooow!!! Please, please don’t let that be a one-off! I’m still kicking myself for not going to night 3 at Rockheim. There is still a ghost of a chance after all! And coming out of “Psychotzar”… All of those encores look like a total blast, to be fair. “Have Fun” is a super cool surprise too! But yeah, HOTB is the bee’s knees.
Happy for those who were at Byscenen. Hoping for more reports!
Thanks for that! Amazing work! Didn’t see "Motorhead Mama" listed on Another Ugly EP, although that is a hidden bonus on the same track as "Summertime Is Here". And iirc the mellotron-samples are exclusive to that release too (not part of the box set, where SIH and MM were split into two tracks)?
I’ll e-mail Petter if y’all don’t think that’s nitpicking.
The setlist is correct, @otherdemon. I'll try to share some thoughts about the concert, but it will probably end up adding more blanks than filling them. My head is still in the ozone.
The band wrote on Instagram that they would be on around 9:30pm, but actually took the stage 8:35. Hope not too many missed out because of this! How to describe the audience tonight? Polite and respectful (not a lot of talking during quiet bits), perhaps? But definitely not reserved. The evolution of headbanging hasn't come as far as most of the most progressive material here, so you can't expect a whole lot of movement, really. I enjoyed myself immensely on the middle of the floor downstairs.
The band were in a great mood from the get go – and it quickly became evident that Bent was in exceptional voice. Seriously, if you were there too – when was the last time you heard him soar like this? He nailed all the high notes with ease, and sounded pretty much amazing on everything. This was my first MP-show since 2019, and I was quite overcome with emotions when they started playing. I've missed that sound, and that experience so much. No earplugs for me, I wanted to take it all in. "Hell" has never made me cry before, but it did tonight. Pt. 3 had a really cool jam. "The Crucible" was heavy as fuck (I don't know how to put it more eloquently in my present state, sorry), and as @cloudhawker pointed out, felt sadly pertinent. For some reason, "Cosmoctopus"; a track I really like on record, is a bit of a blur for me looking back, although it definitely had some good and very intense moments. The mix took some time to get balanced, and Reine's guitar and keyboards seemed to be the most difficult to integrate, but when they hit the sweet spots, they were awesome. The drums were also fighting a bit with particularly the bass, which got better after a while. The sound was massive overall. Very physical, and just what the doctor ordered.
As with all MP-shows, just reading the menu doesn't reveal the ingredients. I'm not a fan of neither "Cloudwalker" nor "Like Chrome" on record, but these were solid, passionate versions that really elevated both songs beyond average.
The dynamics and elasticity of this band simply defies logic. This "Little Lucid Moments"-suite was a crazy, manic cat, with a mind-bending build-up/drum solo towards the end. Brilliant, super-energetic version, and I loved the twin guitars here.
Lacuna was really sweet and widescreen. By now the sound was great too, and the more mellow jamming felt almost four-dimensional at times, and speaking of tracks that are better live than on record: "The United Debased" was fantastic! As far as riff-rock goes, it doesn't get much more kick-ass than this. Debased Bloody Debased!
And "Starhammer"… The main body of the song was already the best version I've heard them do, but then they went into the faster/hamster/scooter-section, and holee… When Bent started that insanely fast groove, I thought to myself 'there is no way you're going to jam out over that tempo'. But of course I was wrong. They were really, really pushing it here, taking all sorts of chances. It was chaotic and overwhelming in the best possible sense.
By this point I knew that we would probably not get NOX'ed, and I was totally fine with that. There had been so many peak moments throughout the show that when Matt Burt filled the speakers followed by the most beautiful "Plan #1" ever, a brilliant night was rounded off in the most perfect way possible. Again, Bent's singing was just insanely good, and I loved Snah's tone here. I'm trying not to tear up just thinking about it.
Then everything went blank for me. I thought I was hallucinating, and turned around towards my friend, and just blurted out something along the lines of 'Is that…? It can't be. NOOO, there's no way… ' I know that I went home afterwards, and I went to bed, but I was still inside "The Wheel". And I still am. It was thunderous, magical, cathartic, beautiful… Talking about it feels a bit like trying to find a window into something that does exist, but I still can't fully bring myself to believe in. I just know that I was there inside it, and became part of it somehow. And after everything we've been through over the past two years, when Bent quietly and sincerely sang 'I still love you', it felt like a reconnecting of souls.
They came back for a "Fools Gold" that perhaps wasn't as good as the 2019-version, with Bent having some sort of bass-trouble – possibly the tuning, as he seemed to be browsing the frets a lot. Maybe he was still spaced out from "The Wheel". It didn't matter. It had a sort of damaged quality to it that made it a fitting closer to a mostly superb and frequently magical show.
I don't know what more to say really, just that I'm grateful, and that Motorpsycho are in many ways more important to me than ever. Looking forward to following the tour, and hope you all get to see them.
Some (if not all) of those encores were acoustic too. I just have to add a "wow", they are definitely shaking things up! That's 34 (if I'm not mistaken) different tracks played over 5 shows, of which several are long suites. Reine wasn't lying when he said they'd rehearsed a ton of tracks.
As @Johnny_Heartfield said in the Ålesund-thread, catch several shows if you can! :MPD:
@supernaut, I too really hope that they shake things up before the next run. I used to feel that after the sheer brilliance of several 2017-2018- and to an extent 2019-setlists, the 2020 ones were the worst since September/early October 2001 (only beating those out because of NOX), but these first three setlists of 2022 are only marginally better. Compared to the much more eccentric Blitz-setlists last year (where I had/still have a ticket, but couldn't go), these are a bit depressing. But the centrepieces of the shows are still the NOX and/or the LLM suites, which is not a bad deal, and will get you pretty far into the psychoverse.
I've seen some psychonauts complain about too many riff-rockers, while I'm more puzzled by them finding room for an almost 10-minute long mid-tempo plodder like "At Empire's End" in the same set as "Entropy", "Cloudwalker" and "Spin, Spin, Spin". That's not to say that they're not half-decent songs live, I just feel that they're pulling the same heartstrings in a sense, and cancel each other out after a while. I don't get that easily bored by MP doing even their more mediocre riff-rockers live, both because of their physical nature (the songs, that is), and also because they do it so damn well. It's mostly bliss. And "The Transmutation Of Cosmoctopus Lurker" is a great track imho. Easily my favourite from KOO.
They're obviously revisiting Here Be Monsters these days, and I'd also put "Lacuna/Sunrise" in the same bag as the aforementioned four songs. "Running With Scissors" has more of a hypnotic quality to it, but I agree with @supernaut that I would rather choose "I.M.S.", or better still "Big Black Dog" (that mid-part/build up with the trio in '16 was so beautiful, and it would be great to hear it with Reine and Tomas). I also agree that Sun Ship is a fresh choice, and will be hoping for that in Oslo.
PS: You may not get "Starmelt/Lovelight", but at least LLM has a very similar intro. :wink:
Yes, using NRK recordings can be both expensive and difficult to license, which is why there’s not a lot of it on Hair Cuts. Going from memory, NRK didn’t record Øya 2010 on the band’s request. I believe the band did an audio recording for themselves, but I have no idea if the video feed was recorded/saved.
I know first hand that at one point Motorpsycho wanted to release NRK’s recording of Roskilde ‘93, but that was also shelved (I don’t know exactly why).
NRK recorded the full show, and are considering using more of the footage for two other programmes (one of them is called Scene) but that means new contracts will have to be made for those. Many bands asked for copies of their footage on Festivalsommer, but NRK are reluctant to share what they call ‘unpublished material’. But there are full shows of all artists involved in the archives.
Hi kajuku!
Roadwork Vol. 1: March 15th, 1999
Roadwork Vol. 2: December 4th, 2000
Roadwork Vol. 3 ("Hair Cuts" DVD/Original Mix): May 19th, 2008
Roadwork Vol. 3 (Remix): June 22nd, 2018
Roadwork Vol. 4: April 8th, 2011
Roadwork Vol. 5: June 22nd, 2018
Thanks for sharing, Punj. What a great interview! Another quote that's very relatable to our ongoing discussion is:
Quote:Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.I’d love to create something that made humans treat the world around us less binary. Less black and white, less good or bad, less either / or: All the really interesting and good stuff is found in-between the fixed points and the extremes. If we realized this and understood the implications, the world would be a better place for everyone.
<3
@Be: Thanks for sharing, but you're not trying to tell me that Andreas Beyer's article is a "debunk" of the CDRR? That's stretching even the "rather" in "rather scientific" a bit too far. The ICSLS are working on a refutation of his criticism as we speak, and you can read an early draft here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210301161354/https://cormandrostenreview.com/refutationofandreasbeyer/
@Johnny_Heartfield: Yes, I called them obnoxious. Not so much his stand on vaccination-passes, but his total rejection of any questioning of the official narrative on the basis of Trump and the alt right comes across as incredibly one-dimensional and small-minded to me. Sometimes what you fight is what you become.
I'm really saddened and surprised by the self-righteous and dismissive attitude from some posters I've always held (and still do) in high regard. But I get that this triggers a lot of emotions. I'm also grateful that this discussion can happen at all here, which I think is more than fair, considering Bent's obnoxious comments. The last thing we need is more polarisation.
And If I could only ask you to read one related piece, it would be the Corman-Drosten Review Report on the PCR-test. If it gets too technical, at least read the points regarding the CT (cycle threshold). Then have a look at the list of names and credentials in the ICSLS consortium, and ask yourself why this isn't all over the media. It is the biggest scandal in the history of mankind.
Love this thread!!
@shakti – WOW! Thanks for that incredible trip down dream-lane! Felt like being there. It's obvious that a Friday/Saturday-combo is the ONLY solution. I felt bad about leaving out THAPC and Mantrick Muffin Stomp (and tons of others) – and there you have them back to back as encores. The mind boggles!
