Slowmotion Apocalypse — Mothra

Track Listing

01. Caterpillar
02. Forever Works Just In Songs
03. In Full View of Heaven
04. Me, Kate, and Other Bastard Sons of My Generation
05. Stash
06. What A Rockin' Heavy Metal Get-Up, Dude!
07. Dim Shape in a Black Hole Life
08. Gamera Part 1: Death Worship Era
09. Gamera Part 2: The So Called Northern Half
10. Haiku

January 3rd, 2010 at 10:49 am by Adam Schultz

Tags: Bury Your Dead, God Forbid, killwhitneydead, Mastodon

Let’s just get this over with. Italian-based Slowmotion Apocalypse’s third album is named after Mothra, that mythical giant moth that terrorizes Tokyo and battles Godzilla in umpteen installments of a C-grade monster movie series. You cool with that? Thought so. Let’s proceed.

Upon first listen, I had nary a clue as to how to approach quantifying just what Slowmotion Apocalypse has accomplished here. At times, I’m banging hard, and at others, I’m simply sitting, entranced, following my brain as it flies around the cosmos on wings of steel. This album is epic, to say the least. Its scope cannot be fully understood even after a dozen listens. It’s that deep of an album. I’m still dissecting it nearly a month after having it land in my lap. The riffs are complex and multi-layered, creating an ethereal atmosphere that even ambient metal gods Mastodon would be jealous of.

The most striking aspect of this album has to be the unique mixture of God Forbid’s chunky tone with the ethereal edge and scope of Mastodon’s pre–Levithan style. In a nutshell, it’s a guitar tone that both hooks you in with groove and still manages to leave your mind wandering. The drumming is rhythmic, pounding, but workmanlike. No frills, just thumps and grooves. The bass dances just beneath the guitars, never overtaking them but always felt. They’re never left behind. By far, the most pedestrian part of this album is the vocals (this despite cameos by Bury Your Dead’s Mike Terry and killwhitneydead’s Matthew Rudzinski), which feel weak and strained compared to the music surrounding them.

The production is good. As I mentioned, the guitar sound is similar to God Forbid’s, though much rawer, lacking a wide-open reverb. Drums are snappy and wouldn’t be amiss in a jazz club. The bass, though mostly drowned out, is present enough to help drive the deep end of the guitar tone, filling out the tinnier areas of the guitar work. Vocals are weak, distorted, and lie in the dead center of the mix, difficult to hear without some EQing.

While it may seem a simple album, catering to the hardcore-leaning melodic death crowd, Slowmotion Apocalypse’s Mothra is subtly layered and difficult to grasp without repeated listens. Even with its lackluster and dishearteningly disengaging vocals, this album will, once in your player, be on its way to becoming one of your favorites.