Mothership Album High Strangeness
Describing themselves as “a steaming hot stew of Iron Maiden and UFO,” Mothership, a power-trio out of Dallas, Texas, is on a mission to deliver the message that “pure, honest rock and roll has once again returned to this planet to unite true believers.”
Mothership photo by Robbie Quinn
Together with Judge Smith on drums, brothers Kyle (bass/lead vocals) and Kelley Juett (guitar/vocals) display their battle-insignia with pride: bikes, chicks, leather, skulls, rumbling bass-lines, thudding drums, cosmic visions and a veritable tsunami of reverb-drenched guitar.
The guys are candid about their love of the ‘70s’ rock sound, and, since crashing onto the scene with their self-titled debut album in 2013, have earned themselves an ever-growing fan-base and regular gigs across North American, Canada, and particularly in Europe.
2017’s High Strangeness marks a high point in the band's career. The album nails its colors to the mast from the get-go, sounding like a long-lost decades-old masterpiece amped up, rebooted, pumped full of electricity and shot out into space. The opener and title-track kicks off with some moody and muscular guitar and cinematic bass-lines, Smith's John-Bonham-esque drums punch you in the face and the whole thing goes stratospheric, with a cutting guitar-solo wailing out over a wash of fuzzed-up noise.
The album nails its colors to the mast from the get-go, sounding like a long-lost decades-old masterpiece amped up, rebooted, pumped full of electricity and shot out into space.
Leaving you no time to breathe, “Ride the Sun” explodes into a full-on aural assault, an unstoppable juggernaut that never loses control, even as it blasts through the barricades. Again, Smith's work is highly impressive, metronomic in its preciseness and with all the power of an earthquake. Kelley's guitar is likewise controlled yet edgy, and Kyle's bass binds, anchors and propels the whole monster forward, as he sings: “Kingdom in the sky has chosen you and I.”
Mothership
Opening with double-time drums and a riff so low it could move rubble, “Midnight Express” sprawls and crawls like something escaped from a witch's cauldron, a dark version of Fantasia. “Keep the evil coming,” sings Kyle, and you can easily imagine an army of foul things marching beneath black banners to the beat. “Crown of Lies” is an oily metal machine, clanging and thrumming, with the hint of a sly nod to Metallica (and Hemingway) with its lyric: “for whom the bell tolls.” From start to finish, the album never lets up, the six-minute-long closer “Speed Dealer” romping home with Godzilla-sized riffs taking us “on the ride of your life.”
The ramped-up retro feel of High Strangeness, which extends even the sleeve-art, (which features a cosmic background, near-naked woman, psychedelic colors, and mighty beasts) is the strength of bedrock of the band themselves. Mothership is an unashamedly macho, swaggering rock group on a never-ending interstellar road-trip. If you could perhaps fault them for the narrow field of their ambition, you can't fault them for their talent. They do what they do very well, and, with a successful string of tours behind them and more to come, 2018 is looking very rosy.
Above all, Mothership reminds us that there'll always be a place for unpretentious rock and roll. In my book that's a blessing.
