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I remember reading some years ago that Bent said he had grew uninterested in metal or something like that, witch I find somehow strange since he seem to be very up to date in the underground metal scene. They might have got stuck in that spaced-out-prog-rock-70's- sound without noticing themselves… I think they should have focused more on heaviness and just the RIFF, and less on details in the music and noodling , and gotten to be one of the greatest underground bands of this time! I still love what the guys do, and it's way better than most bands could except to do in a lifetime, but I stilll feel they don't exploit their full potensial.. They should do at least 3-4 releases a year, and they should do more experimental "out there" 10" EP's!
Quote:What i always loved most about the band was that special Snah-kind of guitar playing on the verge between riffing and strumming, which leaves Bent just enough space to add melody, harmonic shifts or sheer sonic force.Couldn't agree more!
While there might be heavy songs on each album (except for the cake era, maybe) it's a certain 'simplicity' – in the best sense! – combined with that old heaviness that I miss. I thought Feedtime was the highlight of the 2016 shows, and I prefer songs like that over Hell anytime. Maybe it's an age thing that I've come to find those recent very complex song structures rather tiring.
Urgency is a great term indeed! And I just thought, that's something I miss with regard to another aspect – melody! Or maybe freshness/rawness would apply better here. On each record from the 90s there are melodies that I have completely absorbed and will stay with me and touch me till I'm dead. There are only very few tunes from the later eras that move me in the same way. Of course, that's highly subjective, but I still feel there was a different quality to those melodies back then. Or is that due to the guys being older and more settled? Or can't you assess that objectively at all? Or am I just a boring old fart that's stuck in the past? Help?
For those of you that feel there's something missing nowadays, and only find few new songs touching them the way they did in the 90's. What songs from the post-Geb area would that be?
How about The Alchemyst(Little Lucid Moments)?!! especially the grand finale!!!
Also, for me, a lot of songs on BlackHoleWhiteCanvas, for example You Lose&Before The Flood, and Sail On ! Talk about putting in that drive and emotion and riffs and melody!
The Alchemyst also came to my mind quickly. But of course many more.
I agree with the melodies,the big choruses that stick with you forever. Songs where I cannot imagine that there ever was a time they didn't yet exist. It sounds weird since there is no real range of notes coming out of a drumkit, but Geb was a very melodic player and his style was i think essential for that urgency. There i said it…i thought i was over it haha
I'm not sure I miss "that Motorpsychodelic heaviness". I mean, I love some of their old heavy stuff, but not for the SAKE of the heaviness. "Sheer profoundity" – no thanks! Sorry, but I just don't think "Demon box" as a whole album is that solid masterpiece as a lot of you guys seem to do. The good songs on it are amazing, though!
This might seem weird: Motorpsycho is my ALL TIME FAVORITE BAND IN THE WORLD, but they've never done an album that I think is brilliant from start to finish. Sometimes I'm disappointed with their new album – due to my expectations or their "new direction" – but so far (being a fan since "Timothy's monster") it's never been BAD, and in a couple of occasions I've enjoyed that "disappointing new album" a few years after its release.
As long as they SURPRISE me, I won't miss "that Motorpsychodelic heaviness", or anything else they've done in the past. As someone wrote above: those songs/albums are still there to listen to. (Tried really hard to not get too off topic
)
Post-Geb hits for me: The Alchemyst, Year Zero, possibly Hyena and The Promise. But that's it, really.
@ marc: I think I know what you mean by calling Geb's drumming melodic, though I wouldn't have used that word. The best word imho that describes his style is groovy. He was/is such a groovy drummer. A friend of mine put it this way: Geb groovt sogar beim Scheißen /Geb's even grooving when taking a crap.
@ grindove:
Quote:but they've never done an album that I think is brilliant from start to finish.Really? Not even Timothy's Monster? Trust us? Blissard?
@ Great King Rat:
I'll get back to this on Sunday. At the moment too much party, and work too soon (as always on Saturdays)
@greatkingrat and the other's
"What i always loved most about the band was that special Snah-kind of guitar playing on the verge between riffing and strumming".
That was exactly one of the points who made Snahs guitar sounds made me feel so different from others… Very special cause he definitely influenced my own guitar style a lot with that kind of playing.. :STG:
Quote:marc – What i always loved most about the band was that special Snah-kind of guitar playing on the verge between riffing and strumming, which leaves Bent just enough space to add melody, harmonic shifts or sheer sonic force.that certain sound in Kill Some Day, Plan #1, Starmelt and the like? Yup that's what got me hooked originally. This sonic magic, half buried in, half shining because of underproduction. The recordings weren't hammering your face with cinemascopic 90s alternative rock mixing. There was always stuff to discover on the 56th listen. But what if they had not evolved at all in 20 years? I don't think I'd like their music as much as I do. The excitement of the new and unexpected. It's all about their influences and tastes which are too multidimensional to keep repeating one formula.
I do wonder how people reacted to Timothy's Monster who got into them way later on, be that with Love Cult or HMF for example… It's a funny thing with that one. It's very lo-fi, the mixing is quite unconventional, and although Trust Us or The Tower do sound better from a common viewpoint, everytime I listen to it I think it sounds perfect and huge and intimate and should be the industry standard to aspire to. Though of course creatively there should never be such a thing.
And on a side note, this being a somewhat nostalgic thread, I'd like to point out that to me Kenneth is/was AWESOME and was a blessing for the band!
Quote:or those of you that feel there's something missing nowadays, and only find few new songs touching them the way they did in the 90's. What songs from the post-Geb area would that be?I really love Lacuna, that’s again the melody that’s been mentioned before. That’s one that sticks. Hyena got this TM vibe in the melody, but I always found BHBC so poor in general sound, it’s nothing that could really touch me. The missing drummer got this one down, though there’s a lot of fine songwriting on the album. And Hell Pt. 4-6. I wish they‘d develop this whole Hell thing into something really outstanding. I think there’s a lot of unused potential in this.
I might disappoint with my answer, but I really enjoy almost each direction the band takes with every album.
And by that I don't mean I'm one of those who take everything their favourite band does as pure gold and glorifies it, I simply think that most of the things they do, they really do them good.
I like their proggy and spaced-out stuff A LOT, so the last records (from Little Lucid Moments) are really my favourites, and I must admit I'm not a great fan of their 90s records; of course there are MANY songs I love from that period too, but not entire albums.
"The Tower", for example, surprised me both in a positive and "not-so-negative" way:
-positive because I loved Kenneth's drumming, and even if quite different, Thomas' one is really great too!
-positive because there are some really SICK tracks
-negative because it felt -to me- like they might have experimented a bit more…BUT the live shows confirmed that they're more than ready to do that, so…no real disappointment!
As Bent and Snah told in the interwiew that has been translated in another thread, they don't like to repeat themselves. I think that's the reason why you might not find that kind of heavyness in their new stuff, but different shades of it.
And man, those shades are all beautiful!
This is such a great thread. I'm just absolutely loving all the comments.
The timing of the thread has been perfect for me as a few days before Hans' opening post I finally listened to Lobotomizer for the first time, having listened to 8 Soothing Songs for Rut once a few weeks back. For the past few days, then, I've now been listening to both those albums quite a bit and of course following through to Demon Box, which I'd only listened to maybe three or four times. It's so amazing to follow the band's progress/evolution from one album to the next, to see the leap they made from Lobotomizer to 8SSFR to DB to TM and so on.DB seemed to indicate a band refusing to be pigeonholed, possibly at that stage in their careers, afraid to be put in a (Demon) box. But when you're a young band, just getting started, it's hard to show the world you're not what they think you are. By releasing an album (nay, a double album) full of such variety, and starting with a song that bears no resemblance to what went before, that takes courage, determination, self-confidence and a general kind of 'fuck you' to whoever might want to stick a genre label on them. And I think to some degree they've managed to maintain that attitude. But it seems to me, that having made two albums (DM, TM) full of twists and turns – this sound, that style, those genres – they decided to start smoothing out the edges a bit and making albums that felt more coherent. Perhaps they felt they had achieved what they wanted, had made the statement they wanted to make – that they are not one-trick ponies, they are not a 'metal' band or whatever they were being sold as.
What they are to me is a band that has the brilliance to pull off whatever genre they like because they have the songwriting and playing skills, not to mention an apparent love of all music styles, to pull it off. They not only want to say, 'fuck you, we're doing what we want', but also 'we're doing it our way', which is an attitude that seeps into all aspects of their playing, writing, recording, perfomance, and so on.
I'm too late to the feast to be able to say I miss the heaviness and mayhem of Lobotomizer, 8SSFR and DB, or the lo-fi production of TM and Blissard, though I do appreciate the point about urgency. However, I dont think the fire has gone out, not by any stretch. Whether anybody else here felt it or not, I have to say that the Roadburn gig seemed full of fire and urgency. It was like they came to the audience saying "ok you got all these freaky metal bands here but this is what mind-blowing heavy rock sounds like when your focus is getting high on the music and not trying to put across some kind of image or specific style or concept or gimic". To me they are a band's band. They set a standard, not by trying to be amazing or by trying to set a standard, but by just following their muse and being themselves. That's invaluable. And if their style, choices and music changes in response to that, I don't care. The biggest thing I would be worried about losing would not be any one style or sound, but the sense of adventure, the desire to always be creative.
Is there really something to miss? Things happen when they happen and we're lucky enough when they're good when they are good. Yes – I do consider Trust Us the best MP album by far – and yet there's so much fantastic stuff on most of the records that came after it, whoever the drummer at the time (with the exception of BH/BC which I will probably never consider a satisfying MP album, although there are so many great songs on it).
Recapturing the last gigs and the last two regular tours I was attending there was almost too much heaviness involved for me – especially on the somewhat ill-fated 2016 tour.
Too much Demon Box material in the wrong place in the set – killed the joy, made the gigs too long and was just too exhausting for me. That screaming alternative/hardcore/crossover Metal of the early years – a juvenile phase they had to go through, but please – concentrate on the few pearls from that time!
I learned to treasure Demon Box as an album after the re-release and the inclusion of "Mountain" – but please: No more fuckin' "Feedtime" in the middle of the set!
This is of course just my opinion – feel free to disagree! My point is rather this – whatever satisfying or disappointing the latest MP album might be – it is the gigs they're obviously living for, and you can feel it. And – they got better and better over the years! I consider the concerts I attended – and listend to – between 2013 and 2017 their absolute very best time on stage (especially when they were four…).
For me the exciting live band that MP became started in 1996-97 at the earliest and grew steadily to the kind of concert monster we have today – never mind the odd disappointment in a series of sheer musical bliss.
Supernaut: “that certain sound in Kill Some Day, Plan #1, Starmelt and the like? Yup that's what got me hooked originally. This sonic magic, half buried in, half shining because of underproduction. The recordings weren't hammering your face with cinemascopic 90s alternative rock mixing.â€
Word! And of course the ✨melodies✨ which they seemed to be channeling at that time. Like all greats. And yes, Kill Some Day was my gateway drug. More than Jr, Feedtime, Come on in, DB (the song), Plan #1 and well, all of DB actually lol, this very song literally BLEW my teenage mind. (BTW, listened to the throwaway Baby Jesus II the other day on a MP nostalgia binge, even that song is a gem, and even Sanderfinger didn’t ruin it entirely;).
I really feel that the production on those records are close to magic, it’s like abstract painting, you sense the groove, the expression, the emotion, the discord. And the way they had a low singing voice on top of a high one (Trapdoor comes to mind, the moment the bass comes in: goosebumps) is just great, also acoustic guitars w electrics, mm! And the guitar-threading on Blissard.. so so nice. Ref the interview Punj linked to in another thread w Scheps, he was amazed about the production in those early records. Which might be a good sign regarding the new humdinger:)
New great songs post-Geb? Too many to mention, but of course Year Zero, Lacuna, I actually really like Ghost (I sometimes cringe at this particular version of emo-Bent (ref IALC) but this one works for me, the bass and guitar riff-thingy, I’m also a sucker for Painting the Night Unreal, the bass-playing on that song is just mind blowing, I even buy the sheriff line when delivered so convincingly, hehe, though the (underrated!) Phanerothyme is off-topic), the Tower, the Unicorn, Starhammer! That riff, wow, esp live. Hyena is a hit in the Hey Jane vein though I find it a bit too formulaic. But a good song, nice rhythm. The 29th bulletin (somehow reminiscent of Radience Freq.? Though not at all *there*). You Lose (nice drive, nice bridge) though yes, BHBC is a bit lacking in production. A record I rarely listen to due to my stereo situation is Child of the Future, but there are some great songs on that one. LLM is pretty great all over. And loads more.
Anyway, as I mentioned earlier I melted w MP in the 90s so for me those records are absolutely unmatchable from start to finish. They are in my DNA by now. But I do of course love the mature MP. And they are still heavier than heaven.
Lobotomizer to DB is an escalating joy to listen to, somewhat pubescent (esp lyrically), the band (re-)defining and finding themselves in public I guess? (Maiden Voyage is pretty pretty great though, Queen Chinee, How was I to Know, Blueberry: Superior to Lobotomizer!). But somehow the songwriting and production in this era didn’t match the ambition. Yet! Then came the mighty Monster and Bam! Full blown melodic and lyrical maturity. Something must have happened in that transition, not acid (lol;) but *something*, some new awareness, new inspiration. Let’s leave that to future biographers and researchers.
As a sidenote, for me the hardest thing to relate to in the MP discography is the hippie stuff like Go to California, Spin spin blah, and although some of this is evident on the Tower (the Maypole: “solstice ritual†“children singingâ€, “midsummer mayhemâ€, “fairy queensâ€, “a sight beyond compare†I dunno Bent…) they somehow land on the right side of things, maybe due to the changes in the melody. For me!
So much more I wanted to write, so many great comments. And nice to read Ercarnars post, about connecting most w the Kenneth era, that’s exactly how it should be. And all this nostalgia aside, MP has always been about the NOW, luckily.
And yes, as someone said, MP is really a live-band, that’s when everything falls into place, whatever year, whatever constellation. Hoping to see the Drammen gig w elephant 9, should be good!!!
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