THE MOTH is a fairly new band from Hamburg, Germany, and especially considering the fact that this group didn’t form until late 2012 it’s really astonishing how good their upcoming debut record They Fall is. The three-piece plays a witty version of Stoner Rock that sounds very distinct without stepping too much into musical territories that would be disconcerting for fans of the genre.
Riff-wise THE MOTH owes quite something to the big names of the current Stoner Rock scene, Kylesa and Mastodon most of all. They incorporate a lot of rad tappings and almost progressive riff wizardry in their music, rather than just playing sludgy power chords. This fact eventually gives their music an uplifting and at times quite psychedelic feeling.
However there’s one big difference to the aforementioned bands: THE MOTH choose to totally renounce the use of guitar effects – due to this THE MOTH’s music sounds very puristic and direct, I even dare to say “clean”, but of course there’s this fuzzy element throughout the whole record. The production is also quite “unheavy”, so that They Fall has a very untypical sound all in all, which might seem strange at first but is very interesting indeed. I have to admit that a bit more variation of the guitar tone wouldn’t have done the record no harm. You surely do not have to use a shitload of different effects in every single freaking riff, but a few accents here and there would broaden the sound spectrum without diluting the overall pure feeling.
The vocals are strongly mixed in the foreground and you get nice, duelling male/female vocals, often rather spoken than sung or screamed. At first I felt that the female voice comes across a bit unmotivated, but it just seems to be the singer’s style and in fact they sound really quite cool and a bit 70ies Rock like. The male voice is mostly kept in the background and adds an heavy element to the mix.
The band tries to vary its style quite a bit, but maybe due to the lack of variation in the sound most of the songs sound very much the same – if that is necessarily a bad thing is upon the listener to decide. If you dig what THE MOTH are doing it certainly isn’t. An exception would be the closing track The New Speed that delivers some ugly old school Metal in the vein of Celtic Frost/Hellhammer and includes a decent Diamond Head quote, too. Also the band totally engages the gruffy, male vocals in this song, which make the track an ugly, filthy banger all in all. It’s a bummer it’s the only song of that kind, I certainly do like it best.
All personal preferences aside: THE MOTH approach the Stoner Rock genre with a lot of verve and are bold enough to do things a lot differently to their big paragons, thus making They Fall an highly interesting, outstandingly rocking debut full-length you shall check out by any means. It will be available through This Charming Man Records by the end of this month.
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