Motorpsycho – Kingdom of Oblivion

Motorpsycho – Kingdom of Oblivion
Release Date: 16th April 2021
Label: Stickman Records
Genre: Prog Rock
FFO: Black Mountain, Colour Haze, The Notwist.
Review By: Paul Franklin

To start with an advisory. If you are already a fan of Norwegian psychedelic prog rockers Motorpsycho then it might be best to just skip the rest of this review and just buy Kingdom of Oblivion upon its release. You’re probably gonna like it.

Having only released their last album (The All Is One) in 2020, Motorpsycho made good use of the lack of distractions due to the ongoing pandemic and devoted their time and effort to finishing Kingdom of Oblivion. The album having been already partly recorded during the same sessions as the previous record.

With their 30 years of musical experience, Motorpsycho have experimented with nearly every genre, with this release their initial motivation was to create ‘a pure hard rock record’ that harked back to their roots of ‘crunching guitars, roaring bass and the sheer mayhem of unhinged drumming’. The Waning Pt.1&2 is a good start with a fuzzy, stoner riff straight off Kyuss’s Blues for the Red Sun. The vocal style doesn’t quite match, being a little too harmonised and choral for my liking but taken as a whole, it’s not a bad track. The title track is up next and again it kicks off with a meaty riff, before wavering a bit in the middle before being saved with some nice guitar work towards the end.

The press release states that ‘Kingdom Of Oblivion became much more…as other lighter influences slipped in alongside the big riff backbone’ and this is where it starts to lose me. Lady May 1 drew a disappointed sigh as it goes heavy on the folky medieval vibe, with flutes, acoustic strumming, and even more stylized vocal harmonies. From then on, more and more elements from different musical genres are thrown into the literal mix, to the point where their increase was directly linked to the decrease in my interest. They cover The Watcher (featuring The Crimson Eye), a Hawkwind track penned by Lemmy and also released by Motorhead, sounds like it has potential! No, it is five minutes that would be better spent making a cup of tea! Likewise, the trio of Atet, After the Fair and the closing Cormorant are pointless 2–3-minute instrumental interludes that just underline the importance of the ‘Skip to Next Track’ button. To be honest the compulsion to press that button became increasingly hard to resist the longer I listened to this album, which was a shame, because there were a few moments in there where they did attract my attention. The riff that kicks in at the 1m 20secs mark of The Transmutation Of Cosmoctopus Lurker (Rob Zombie eat your heart out!) is great, but it’s an all too brief highlight in the ten minute plus track.

If you are a Motorpsycho fan and have ignored my advisory at the start of this review, then I imagine you will strongly disagree with everything I have just written. Fair enough, I did warn you. 

(2 / 5)