Friday, April 18, 2014

Ultra Review - The Graviators' Motherload





 THE GRAVIATORS: Motherload

   I have been listening to this album for a while now, and have had a really hard time with categorizing exactly what I am hearing.  I am going to stray off topic for a moment, and then will bring it back in.  If you only know their hits, you won’t understand the comparison but if you are a true Blue Oyster Cult fan, you will know what I am talking about.  BOC’s sound is just different.  You would buy a new album and the songs wouldn’t sound quite sound right to you, yet you’d keep playing them because they are intriguing, and would eventually reach a point where you loved all of them.  This comes close to describing how I feel about “Motherload”.  I thought of the BOC comparison right away because when I played the first track, “Leif’s Last Breath-Dance of the Valkyrie”, I immediately thought of a Pepper Keenan-era Corrosion of Conformity sound with Blue-Oyster Cult songwriting.  Similar to BOC, the Graviators’ sound really varies within an album.  It runs the gamut from fuzz to clean to heavy distortion.  Their sound has reminded me of COC, BOC, Sheavy and Sabbath all in the same tune sometimes.  Yet with all that variation the band manages to create an overall cohesive atmosphere to the entire album.  As is the case with so many Swedish rock bands, the guitar tones and production quality are inspirational.   Included is a re-recorded “Druid’s Ritual”, a tune which really covers a lot of ground musically.   If you will be checking out the video for “Narrow Minded Bastards” below, the most Sabbath-sounding tune on the album, note the super tasteful guitar solo at around 4:20 and what a great guitar sound.  Enjoy!
-Ultra

“Narrow Minded Bastards”

THE GRAVIATORS:                                                                                        

Niklas Sjöberg: Vocals
Martin Fairbanks: Guitar
Johan Holm: Bass
Henrik Bergman: Drums

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