Reviews roundup – T.E. Morris vs. Jupiter Society vs. Desolation Yes!

Reviews roundup – T.E. Morris vs. Jupiter Society vs. Desolation Yes!

T.E. MORRIS
And You Were The Hunter
Function

Cheer up, Tommy boy! It’s no that bad. Except, of course, it must be, if I’m telling someone to cheer up from my daily pit of misery. Apparently, Tom Morris, or T.E. Morris as he is solo, is the – koff – “driving force behind post rock behemoth Her Name Is Calla”. Which means as much to me as gravity, moon landings and falafel. Which is to say, sweet Fanny Adams. Seems he put out half a dozen solo EPs before releasing his solo record, “We Were Animals”,and now we’ve got “And You Were The Hunter”. And, my, but it’s bleak.

If you were Paris Jackson and cocked an ear to doom and gloomers like ‘The Long Distance Runner’ and ‘Hopeless’, you wouldn’t need lessons in how to use a meat cleaver, let me tell you. It’s as if he distilled the essence of oppressive and alchemised it into musical notations. All offset by a voice that would give Marvin the Paranoid Android something to aim for in life. I can’t claim to have enjoyed it, but if I had to pick, I’d be going for the more acoustic numbers over the band enhanced numbers which take his misery and suck some of the death out of them.

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JUPITER SOCIETY
From Endangered To Extinct
Fosfor Creation

Dung-du–du-du-dung-dung-dung – space metal. Yay, it’s Jupiter Society rushing to my rescue after my close encounter with T.E. Morris. Now, Jupiter Society is the brainstorm of Carl Westholm, keyboard player and producer for Carptree, who are themselves a weird and wonderful prog band. However, Mr Westholm has also decided to go for doom and gloom as he conceptualises the stupidity of the human race via the medium of an alien invasion leading to devastation and the defeat of humanity. Now I believe in de-evolution as much as the next man, but give me a break.

Thankfully, music wise, it’s a lot better. Aided and abetted by members of Carptree, Krux, Candlemass, Soilwork, Opeth, and Evergrey, this veers between prog metal, space metal and space rock with great abandon across a fine set of tunes, of which ‘Invasion’, ‘Fight Back’ and ‘Queen of Armageddon’ are my early favourites. If you’re going to endure the apocalypse and Mr Westholm seems to think it’s imminent, hopefully we’ll be taken down to a cracking space metal soundtrack, rather than an electronic dirge from Tangerine Dream.

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DESOLATION YES!
Out Of Orbit
EmuBands

Oh, great. Two slabs of doom and gloom, and now a band with the word desolation in their name. And they come from Glasgow. It’s as if the musical Gods are conspiring to finish me off. The bastards. On the plus side, they also have an exclamation mark in their name, and are part Slovakian. Which will hopefully outweigh the weegie. Here we go – and they’re an electronica band. Never mind.

But, hang on, there is some life in them there grooves as the electro-rock of ‘Shivers’ and ‘Atrophy’ come blasting out of the speakers. Nice one, if a bit Atari Teenage Riot. It goes a bit dull for a few tracks after that, with more poppy bleeps and swooshes, and the odd hint of trance, but things kick out again by the time you arrive at ‘Army Of Flesh’, and from then on it’s a 1992 electro-goth rush to the finish line. When I sat down with these albums, this would have been the one I would have picked for Bottom Of The Pops, but it just goes to show that you can’t always judge a weegie by it’s cover. Good work!

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