DEMON BOX

After two years after their debut release, Motorpsycho started to explore more sounds and styles. While not fully progressive rock yet, their 1993 release of Demon Box would mark a shift in the band's musical stylings, not bordering themselves up with grunge but instead trying new recipes into the mix in their hour-long breakthrough album.

To see how they changed, the first song, Waiting For The One, does a great job of showing that the band is trying a bit more genres than just grunge and stoner rock. It is a purely folk tune, with acoustic guitars and all. What I like about this song is that even though it is very different, you can still feel that early Motorpsycho edge in some shape or form. It is just the vibes this song radiates, it both feels good yet also very grimly as well. It makes for a good opener to this sophomore album.

Continuing with trying new things, Nothing To Say while still being very grunge has a lot of nods and winks towards the indie/alt-rock sound that bands like Foo Fighters and Pixies were doing in the 90s. I do dig that riff they keep up at the start of the song. It is really heavy yet extremely melodic all at once, creating a sound that is very much their own without sounding too gritty. I also really love how Bent Sæther can go from very calm and collected vocals to very in-throat yelling that makes you think he is in pain. He has a natural soft vocal range so his yelling makes his singing feel very intense. It all makes for a great song that, while still very much grunge, has some more interesting elements to make it not JUST your typical grunge song.

We get even heavier with Feedtime, and they are embracing a bit more of their stoner metal music from Lobotomizer, but this time picking up the pace, creating this very energetic take on their sound prior, and revolutionizing it to where each turn just knocks you over. This is also when the band starts to use sampling in their works, where in the middle of the song you hear someone tell an audience that a choir will play a song that many people have heard before. I know it feels a little weird to add that into a song with no rhyme or reason, but I just think it is a neat inclusion. It just adds more flavor to the music I think, and really with such an already tasty lineup of songs, adding something new is Motorpsycho's specialty, even at this point. It is such a good track that adds more to this dish than anything else.

Now while Nothing To Say had some indie/alt-rock elements, Sunchild on the other hand is practically an indie rock song. It has that fun, rockabilly-type rock music that is very fast moving, and quick to the pace. While not my favorite expression of music, I do admit this fun portrayal of their harder sound makes this cake they are baking have even more layers than anticipated, not only making music that is fun as all hell, but yet very expressive in their energy.

The band probably knew the album was getting a bit too heavy, so they decided to make the next track, Tuesday Morning, an acoustic song. No drums, for the most part, just the acoustic guitar, and some wacky sound effects sprinkled in, plus the beautiful singing of Bent Sæther. It does grow on you at this point that these guys are making music they want to create, not abiding by any genre they put themselves under other than the ones they want to utilize, and that is why I love them so much. They are kinda like Rush in a way, not caring about what others think and proceeding to create the music they want to make.

Continuing with those acoustic stylings, but changing things from a more folk song to a bit more of a gothic country song, we have All Is Loneliness. I do think that country twang works very well with this song since it kinda has this already dark and foreboding sound already, but the country music added onto it makes it even spooky. I think Motorpsycho is at its peak when they get a little spooky. They are like the Count Chocula of progressive rock bands, they are a great autumn band that can do very well when given the chance.

Now I am gonna be honest, I do not care for the production quality of my music. One of my favorite bands is Magma, and some of their live albums have extremely bad sound quality. However, those albums are still very good. However, again, I will say the low quality of Come on In absolute works. It sounds like an old home recording of some teenager's song he made after coming home from school and recording something he thought of while he did his math homework. The low quality gives it charm, and I like a charm in my music. I think the quality is important, but even the lack of quality can also be important as well. This is a great song, and I am a sucker for it.

Now we get into the most bizarre song off this album, which is Step Inside Again. This to me is very much on that same weird Avant Garde monster that Careful With That Axe Eugene is like. The songs are very similar. Very mellow, very scary. Not only that but both have a very sharp scream that works surprisingly well. It is not the best song off here, but in the mood of the album, it works, and sometimes you just need a song that works.

Now we get into the band's first epic, the 17-minute title track of Demon Box. For a first-timer, this one does things very nicely. It is loud, abrasive, and haunting, and does a lot of things that work well. I love how it has a shift in tone and volume, where the first few minutes, it is very loud, gritty, and intense, to this very quiet drone melody, and then back to the heavy and intense music without any warning. I do like this structure because it does some interesting things in the core structure of the music, plus it's gnarly, to say the least. My main issue is the quieter bits in the middle. Now I am fine with the band reducing the heaviness in their sound, but what I love about Motorpsycho's epics is that they are consistent in their focus. Each movement sounds similar to the last one, but there is always something new whether it is a new riff, a new instrument, or making things a bit more streamlined from before. This has a hard shift in tone and sound rather than a natural one, and in some retrospect, I kinda wish that the drone bit was removed entirely or that this song was split into three separate tracks, like say have the first movement, the heavy and intense part be a track called Demon Box Part 1, than have the drone bit be its separate track in between, and then go into the next louder part of Demon Box Part 2. For an epic, this is solid and I do like it a lot, but the track suffers a tiny bit from how hard the shifts from the intensely powerful music to the quiet drones can be.

Now I will say that this album is not bad at all, in fact so far it is amazing, but I will say that Babylon isn't my favorite. I think they did way better in this more indie rock style on Sunchild than they have done here. Not to say this song is bad, but it feels less like they tried to make some kind of indie rock or punk rock song and more like them just messing around and trying to make something work within the context of the album.

Now what does work well within the indie rock sound is Junior. Man, I love this song, it is incredibly rhythmic, and incredibly powerful, but not too rehashy of ideas as Babylon did when it came to comparison with Sunchild. It tries to be its own thing, and I do like that. It is a very fun song just to turn your brain off and just jam. This is a key moment on the album for sure.

Now I would never say Motorpsycho is a post-rock band, but Plan #1 is a very post-rock song, at least in the first minute or so. Those first minutes do remind me of a Godspeed You! Black Emperor intro with the talks of god and Christianity and such, which is kinda how the epic of Static started up with the rantings of a priest to his church. I'd say for the intro alone, it is a very interesting song for Motorpsycho to tackle, and I do love how it does go back to that intro after the music settles down, and then they combine the intro back with the music making for a very high crescendo. It is a very nice melody that I am surprised isn't talked about much in the Motorpsycho community.

Now my favorite song off this album, and one that I can never get out of my head, is Sheer Profoundity. Man, I love this song with my heart, just that bassy riff from the guitar and how it just consistently pounds away as Sæther asks if his sir needs anything that needs to be done. That one line of "Anything I can do for you, sir?" always gets stuck in my head, and I do not know why. It is surprisingly catchy even though it probably wasn't meant to be catchy. It is just so good in its details and its playing. It is one of the band's first, truly amazing songs they created in their early career.

The last song is a bit more of a punk song, and that is The One Who Went Away. While I am not a fan of punk music, aside from post-punk and art punk like Cardiacs or Unwound, I do think this does pay off well. This album is a very eclectic piece already, and while not progressive rock they do show a variety of genres under their belt that they can pull out of their pockets at any point in time. This song ends the trend off on a high note, with something the band hasn't done yet and doing it surprisingly well. Through an album of twists and turns, the last turn will surely always be a good ending.

A high improvement from Lobotomizer, Demon Box not only continues the band's sounds but introduces new ones as well. No wonder many Motorpsycho fans say this is one of their favorite records because it not only broke the mold for the band but made new molds for them to break in future releases. If you liked Lobotomizer but wanted something more in sounds and scope, Demon Box is your key my friend, and even if you haven't listened to Lobotomizer then I still suggest listening to Demon Box. It is great, and one that needs a lot of love.