Belgian stoner metal? Yes, thank you.
I hadn’t heard of MOTSUS until they offered me a download of their new EP Oumuamua. I’m glad they reached out to me, because this thing is heavier than that Chinese space station due to crash on Earth any day now.
The royally epic “Kings and Queens” opens the EP. The whole track rumbles with an angry energy that is hard to describe, but “score for a rocket launch film scene” is fairly close.
The guitars soar on “Warm,” while the bass and drums hammer like dwarves in a deep mine searching for rare gems. “Freddy” is equally heavy, and “Exploder (Part I)” is doom conjured up from the bottom of that dwarven mine. The bass in particular stands out on this track, sounding like a growling lion and a jet engine roar at different times.
“Hoochy Woochy” might have a funny title, but the song is isn’t jovial. It’s as thick as battlefield mud. The build up to the rolling, crashing drums, furious guitars, and war hammer bass is excellent. The EP ends with “Tin Men,” a churning, guttural tune perfect for the march of robotic soldiers across a desolate landscape. It also has the only lyrics of the album – a monologue about a UFO coming to either destroy us, or worse, ignore us all together.
Oumuamua is a Hawaiian word for “scout,” and the album’s title refers to the first interstellar object to pass through the solar system. It was discovered in October 2017 and is tumbling through space. It took about 600,000 years to pass by us. It’s not a comet or an asteroid. It’s some sort of new object, according to NASA. It passed us by. It didn’t stop.
Regarding alien life in the universe, Arthur C. Clarke said, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
MOTSUS has created a mixtape for this unknown traveler. Let’s hope it comes back to hear more.
Keep your mind open.
[Don’t wait 600,000 years to subscribe.]