12th April 2024
Christopher Nosnibor
Having showcased single cut ‘Hypocrisy – Weaponised’, released ahead of the second album by progressive/melodeath act Mother of All, I was keen to get my lugs around the album in full, not least of all to see if I could get a handle on what ‘melodeath’ is. There doesn’t seem to be a week where I don’t stumble on another microgenre. This isn’t something exclusive to metal, although it certainly seems to be the strain which contains the most minutely fragmented forms.
While now a full and proper band, Mother of All is Martin Haumann’s concept. As the bio informs us, ‘With a background in The Royal Danish Conservatory and extensive training in different musical disciplines, Martin draws on varied and unusual influences to create a unique vision for Mother of All, but his prime inspiration comes from the deep cauldron of metal. Continuing to explore the art form with Mother of All, Martin creates songs that are diverse and eclectic in nature by incorporating melodic and progressive elements into death metal.’
On the evidence of Global Parasitic Leviathan, that means some crunching riffs played fast and furious and driven by rapidfire drumming, but with a lot of fast, flamboyant licks which are big on harmonics and fretwork tapestry. While the contrast is nicely separated and the detail adds layers to the thunderous assault, I can’t help but feel it falls into that self-made trap of showcasing technical skills to the extent that it undermines the overall power of a song at times.
Again, it’s a trait common across the board, but particularly in metal that there seems to be a compulsion to overcompensate, but overshowing the technical competence. It happens a lot in writing, too, though, particularly among newer writers who feel the need to demonstrate their writing skills by overwriting, packing in superfluous adjectives and paragraph upon paragraph of detail because look! I can do this! Well done. But how about you actually tell us a story? Or, in this context, play us a song?
Mother of All have some songs, and they’re burning with incendiary rage, and when they knuckle down and let the fury flow, they absolutely kill it.
The sentiments are solid, and the song titles speak for themselves: ‘Corporate Warfare Leviathan’, ‘Debt Crush’, ‘Merchants of Self-Loathing’ all rage antagonistically against the machines of capitalism and corporate domination, and when they trim the flamboyant fretwork and focus on delivering brute force, as on ‘The Stars Already Faded’, they really hit hard, Haumann’s raw, raging vocal a magnificent articulation of tortured anguish. ‘Debt Crush’, too, is five minutes of full-throttle fury, and although ‘Merchants of Self-Loathing’ gets a bit rap-metal, it’s in the Judgment Night vein and so deserves a pass. ‘Pillars’ seems to lean on Neil Young during the intro, before going all-out raging metal. Keep on rockin’ in the free world, indeed. The sentiment extends beyond genre, of course.
Global Parasitic Leviathan isn’t short on ideas and positively froths and overspills with technical ability, as they’re keen to show us, over and over. But, and this a lesson that takes time – less is more. Global Parasitic Leviathan is good, and it’s consistent in style and tone, but I can’t help but feel that tempering the fretwork would hit harder, because when they really riff out they’re utterly pulverising.
AA
Aural Aggravation 