"Colonial" review on Halifax Collect

http://halifaxcollect.blogspot.com/2012/01/moutheater-colonial.html

"Moutheater's Colonial comes into my life with a little bit of everything. And that's good for a change. They sound to me as a well established band who are into differnt things and pretty good at mixing these influences into a coherent whole.

Colonial is similar in style to Moutheater's previous material in my opinion; heavy yet accessible, angry and I'd even say catchy at times. Opener "Keeping Secrets" is a strange combination of Queens of the Stone Age and heavier metal which switches up at the end of the song, like two songs tied into one. It starts of with a thundering Nick Oliveri-escue bass line and ends with screams of bloody murder, quite the opposite to where it started. An experiment that works.

"The Benefits of Self Mutilation" sounds like Kylesa, minus the blasting stoner type riffs. Like they stole Kylesa's rythm section and just sprayted some very simple and effective, brutal riffage on top. Also, again, the same bloody Neurosian screaming! Scott Kelly would be proud!

"Enslaved does sounds similar to Neurosis (before going all ambient) and also a bit slow and drony. It's a simple song, with a simple riff just repeated over and over again but somehow doesn't tire. Sort of like "Floyd the Barber" by Nirvana, which is an idiotically simple thing but somehow makes sense. I guess it's the delivery which counts at the end of the day. Simple verse chorus verse metal song, with a twist of lemon, as the man said.

Then to tie it all up the album ends with "Nauseous" which has these dreamy vocals layered on top of heavy rythms, leading to the hard rocking chorus. I can imagine this is what it feels like drifting in and out of a coma. Great way to end the (way too short) album.

Colonial clocks in at under 20 minutes so while listening on repeat it all somehow comes together as a consistent whole. I found myself leaving it on for long stretches of time, which incidentally also made it feel like a single long song. Next time I'd love to get a full LP out of Moutheater. It's one of those bands I really like when I listen to them but there isn't enough material to keep me hanging around for too long, although I always enjoy the time spent listening. Let's hope that changes soon."

- Theodór Helgason