Mothership: Tuneful Texas Metal That Doesn’t Waste Notes

Imagine a metal band that doesn’t waste notes or get self-indulgent. Hard to believe, but that’s Texas power trio Mothership, whose self-titled debut album is out today from Ripple Music. In a style where so many acts either ape the classics or the flavor du jour, it’s refreshing to hear a band who have an instantly recognizable sound, one that draws on 40 rich years of heavy rock but isn’t reverential about it. There’s plenty of post-Sabbath, Orange Goblin-ish chromatic riffage, but without the death-rattle vocals. It’s a compliment to say that there actually a couple of tracks here that could have been radio hits back in the 70s, when a couple of obvious reference points, Blue Oyster Cult and Molly Hatchet were peaking. Guitarist Kelley Juett is the real deal, capable of rapidfire Adrian Smith/Dave Murray runs but more likely to bend notes into the ozone and build a tune like Buck Dharma, or go surrealistically screaming in the same vein as Nektar’s Roye Albrighton. Juett’s bassist brother Kyle and drummer Judge Smith keep it low to the ground with a cast-iron swing, without cluttering the arrangements.

The opening instrumental, Hallucination, has a long intro that nicks Pink Floyd’s Welcome to the Machine before the first  fuzztone riff kicks in, multitracked bluesmetal  riffage with a neat Hendrix allusion kicking off a doublespeed stampede. Cosmic Rain is heavy Texas boogie as BOC might have done it – think Buck’s Boogie, but more creepy and sludgy, the bass kicking off a Maidenesque interlude that finally gets an overamped wah guitar solo.

City Nights motors along with a vintage Molly Hatchet groove, sounding straight out of 1978, with a wickedly haphazard guitar solo running down the scale and obliterating everything in its path. From there they segue into Angel of Death and its Motorhead-meets-BOC assault.

Win or Lose is not the Sham 69 classic but an original, sort of the Kinks’ Superman as Sabbath might have done it and a clinic in good, smart, heavy guitar: slurry chromatic riffage, East Coast boogie, nonchalantly maniacal tremolo-picking and acid blues. Elenin works a fast/slow Maiden dynamic for all it’s worth, through a squalling, psychedelic end-of-the-world scenario.

Eagle Soars blends Texas boogie and Sabbath into a crunchy, menacing roar. The album ends with Lunar Master, a hallucinatory biker epic that nicks the long interlude from Maiden’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, right down to the tasty bass solo and a zillion menacing, echoey layers of guitars as the song rises again. The vinyl record (!!!) and cd each come with a download card and a poster; you’ll have to supply your own hooch. And you don’t have to be a metalhead to like this: much as it’s loud and trippy, it’s also catchy as hell. Let’s ask the devil to send them to New York and book them into St. Vitus.

Out of Order’s New Album Kicks Ass

In one way, Caitlin Millerick’s Russ Meyer-style graphics on the cover of Out of Order’s second album, Hey Pussycat! are a dead giveaway to what’s on the record: these three women don’t mess around, going for the jugular every time, ten songs in just over 28 minutes. But their music isn’t the least bit retro: guitarist/singer Lydia Lucy Lane, bassist Gilliey DeSilva and drummer Erin Millerick have a sound that’s completely their own. Raw, slyly assaultive and unselfconsciously defiant, their noise-punk blends unbridled Distillers-style vocals, searing, occasionally feedback-drenched guitar and a supertight, nimble rhythm section. John Sharples’ rich production looks back to the 80s in the best possible way, heavy on the high midrange, drums up just enough in the mix to showcase Millerick’s powerful chops without drowning out the rest of the band.

The opening track Impossible balances Motorhead stomp, classic punk riffage, ringing dreampop echoes and an absolutely corrosive, jagged guitar solo: “I am impossible to please” is Lane’s uneasy mantra. The second track, a whoah-oh step toward emo-punk is followed by the absolutely scorching Dirty Love, which is catchy as hell, like Shellac set to a punk beat, with a deliciously murky outro. Don’t Do That Baby takes a bluesy oldtime rock tune, gives it a crunchy punk bounce and just enough menace in the vocals to add a scary edge. The acidic Rosy builds from an abrasive verse to another catchy-as-hell punk chorus, Lane’s half-spoken vocals underscoring the song’s bludgeoning sarcasm.

There are a couple of lickety-split hardcore tracks here: Gimme Noise, with its wicked minor-key riffage and Horror Show, a pretty irresistible invitation to join the party. Teddy Homewrecker (NYC) works a midtempo Sham 69-ish vibe, a cautionary tale about a male slut: “You’ll need rehab when he’s through,” Lane warns. “He kissed you, he kissed me too.” The album ends with two killer tracks. The deliciously harsh Nobody Cares scorches from catchy punk chromatics to ominously echoing atonalities on the chorus, while the equally caustic Therapy builds to a literally screaming pitch out of noisy hardcore. Where should this great band be headed? To the Warped Tour, for starters. But not at some cheesy side stage next to the nacho concession at the edge of some Walmart parking lot: they need to be front and center where they can get the entire crowd to go nuts. They’re at Local 269 on July 19 at around 10: onstage, they add seriously evil guitar feedback, give DeSilva extra space to show off her supersonic fingers and let the drums go completely wild.

Mighty High’s New Album: Still Smoking

The follow-up to Brooklyn band Mighty High’s hilariously classic, satirical Mighty High in Drug City, from 2008, is hardly what you might expect. That one stumbled with a spot-on wooziness through a stoner universe populated by pilfered Ted Nugent riffs and every drug ever invented – as a Brooklyn counterpart to This Is Spinal Tap, it’s priceless. Mighty High’s latest album, Legalize Tre Bags – actually, let’s not stop at the little ones, let’s legalize ‘em all! – is available on green vinyl (duh) from Ripple Music along with a download card for all the vinyl virgins. At heart, this is a punk rock record, beginning with I Don’t Wanna Listen to Yes, which from its cruel intro and the slurry Motorhead riffs the band leaps into afterward is sadly over in just a minute and sixteen seconds. Despite their metal cred, guitarists Chris “Woody” MacDermott and Kevin Overdose, bassist Matt “Labatts” Santoro and drummer Jesse D’Stills have a lot in common with the Dead Kennedys: they like short songs.

Mooche, a surprisingly straight-up punk tune, chronicles the ultimate freeloader weedhead who won’t get high on his own supply unless you’re paying for it – and if you’re going with all the way up to 241st St. in the Bronx to score with him, he wants an extra hit! The Ram, a riff-rocking tribute to “25 years of toking…I won’t quit til I take my last hit, kill off what’s left of my mind” has a twin guitar solo and then a Spinal Tap hammer-on attack. Speedcreep goes for a blend of hardcore and Motorhead, with an amusing halfspeed interlude; Tokin’ and Strokin’ has a cowbell intro and a musical joke that’s painfully obvious but still too funny to give away here. Cheap Beer, Dirt Weed shows you how much mileage you can get out of one chord and a couple of sticky riffs: “The perfect high is in my reach,” the poor guy stuck in the industrial wasteland of New Rochelle, New York insists. Likewise, Come On! I’m Holdin’, a tribute to the superior weed you find in Brooklyn, at least compared to “That weak shit in Washington Square, I had to live and learn!”

They go back to UK Subs-style punk for Drug War – “Your weed against mine!” – complete with sampled Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush “quotes” to underscore their point. Then the mockery kicks in, first with Loaded Loaded, a Molly Hatchet spoof, then the longest track here, Chemical Warpigs, an irresistible if completely over-the-top mashup of Slayer’s Chemical Warfare and Sabbath’s War Pigs. The album ends with High on the Cross, a twistedly spot-on contemplation of the ultimate drug – and the most lethal one – religion. If you like New York-centric weed jokes (“High Street/Brooklyn Bridge, Jay Street is next”), funny songs that make fun of heavy metal cliches, and purist guitar sonics – the production here is bubonically good – you’ll love this album. Can you listen to it without being high? Yes. Well, make that affirmative: as Mighty High wants you to know, Yes sucks!