Thursday, August 28, 2014

Moutheater Passing Key

I've had a little bit of a rough summer. I've had friends, family, and pets die. I've had a moderate depression, and lost friends because of that. I've had car problems, broken stuff in the house, and even a few minor ( or maybe not minor, we don't know, yet)  neurological issues . So, yeah, a bit rough.
However, Andrew Aircraft had a really rough time, at some point, because these are some seriously depressed and self- excoriating lyrics- like, even I am impressed enough to mutter "Dude, you need help" at certain points. So, please understand, despite the ridiculous name, and the type of music, this stuff is serious business.
So, what kind of music do Moutheater make? I think the shorthand would be "Grunge"- but that sells it short. A better descriptor would involve "Led Sabbath" style early 70's hard rock,  "Unsane Lizard" noise rock, with a large amount of Melvins at their most metallic. Soundgarden, this is not.
So, everything I've said so far makes it seem pretty harrowing, right? Why would you want to hear that? Because, as Bauhaus would have it, they "swing the heartache"- they make the anger, depression, and self recrimination ROCK. It's post modern blues- you go through the pain to overcome the pain. At least, that's the function it's serving for me.
So, just to do my usual thing- I'm hearing a fair amount of Gibson on this- probably a Les Paul of some description, but there are bits that sound distinctly sweeter with a more focused gain structure, so possibly something with a mini humbucker. There are bits where the feedback and hum overcome the signal completely, so I don't think we're talking about modern amps- I'm thinking more 1970's Fender, or Ampeg to get what the kids call a "bitcrushed" sound ( really it's just completely saturated on the even harmonics, but why bring sound engineering to a metaphor party?) The bass is your standard  Jazz bass into Ampeg- I don't think there's any doubt on that, and the drums, though close-mic'ed are ye olde trap set- no Neil Peart-isms here. Just hit those toms with clubs...

No comments:

Post a Comment