From the band name to the list of influences, Mother’s Whiskey are resolutely old school. Here you will find no digital trickery or spurious effects, hell, the band don’t even utilise overdubs, with each and every track you’ll hear on ‘Vol 1’ a single run through by each and every member involved. Even the album length, some thirty five minutes spread over seven tracks, harks back to the days when albums were crafted with a single slab of vinyl in mind. This is all to the credit of mother’s whiskey, a band for whom the mindless fad-following of the music press is entirely meaningless – their passion is for the superhot blues rock of the seventies where bands like Black Sabbath and Pentegram evolved a whole new doom-laden sound and sent it out into the night from where it could burn its way into the brains of the earliest metal fans, and on the seven tracks here they continue that tradition of raw, riff-heavy rock with aplomb.
Opening with the smoke-obscured mysticism of ‘cloaks and cauldrons’, the oh-so-live recording style pays dividends as the band sound lean, mean and aggressive, whilst Greg Powers has a voice that edges into Dio territory over the crunchy riffs and super-charged solos. It’s an auspicious start to the album, although you can’t help but think it would sound even better on a slab of crackly black vinyl, spinning lazily in the candlelight. ‘Scorpion Moon burn (warning)’ is no less impressive. The riff is a turbo-charged slab of heavily distorted, ketamine-fuelled blues rock that falls somewhere between ‘heaven and hell’-era Sabbath and Reverend bizarre, whilst the song is a blisteringly brilliant doom monster guaranteed to take you back to a time when music fans gathered around a turntable rather than a computer to sink beers and trade new musical finds. ‘Ad Astra’ has a syrupy feel to it, a gnarled groove that has you nodding your head without even being conscious of it, the pounding drums of Shane Barbeau propelling the whole thing along at a briskly hypnotic pace whilst the guitars churn and swirl in the murk. This is rock music as it should be, raw, untamed and real – a warts-and-all recording that sounds all the better for the listener being safe in the knowledge that they’re actually hearing the musicians play.
The fourth track is a twisted, ever-evolving slab of rock named ‘feel the wrath’ that opens with the intensity of the very first Black Sabbath album, all droning riffs and thunderous drums, before the band deliver up an epic series of doom riffs before paring the whole thing back to psychedelic basics, bassist Brandon Peterson taking the opportunity to show off his skills before the guitars come crashing back in. ‘Forever my queen’ is a short, groove-laden beast complete with wild, bare-chested solos whilst ‘blessed boar’ slows the pace somewhat, tapping into the sort of dark, psychedelic groove that Kyuss made their own before spinning off into dark, increasingly agitated terriotory, the riffs slashing at the listener’s senses with increasing ferocity. ‘The passage’ is, tragically, the album’s final track (although the band are already promising ‘vol 2’) but it goes off with one hell of a bang. An instrumental track, it emphasises the musical power of the four-piece, the guitars surging against the steel-plated rhythm section to create an almighty, neck-muscle threatening groove before collapsing in a storm of feedback.
In just thirty-five minutes, Mother’s whiskey display a passion and verve for creating doom-laden hard rock with a psychedelic edge. Drawing from the likes of Sabbath, Zeppelin, The stooges, Pentegram and Kyuss, theirs is a devilishly dark, groove-laden take on stoner rock that leaves the listener in no doubt as to the band’s ability and future potential. Released digitally and on CD, what Mother’s Whiskey need now is a record label (are you listening out there?) to step up and release this gem on vinyl. With ‘vol 2’ promised for later in the year (seriously we can’t wait) and the band touring heavily in support of ‘vol 1’ (although sadly not in the UK as yet), Mother’s whiskey play pure, unadulterated old school rock and their raw, gritty sound is second only to their excellent song-writing skills. If you dig huge riffs, smoke ‘n’ whiskey hewn vocals and pounding percussion (and seriously, if you don’t, you probably shouldn’t be here) then ‘Vol 1’ is something you should check out and fast – quite simply Mother’s whiskey rule, so pour yourself a shot, crank up the volume and kick back with this awesome record – you won’t regret it.
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