THE CRUCIBLE

'Motorpsycho' just keeps putting out great albums, especially recently, with their music being more progressive than ever. All throughout their years of releasing many studio albums, EPs and singles, the main two individuals who formed the band have been there; Bent Saether on vocals, bass and etc., and Hans Magnus Ryan also on vocals and guitars. There have been a few different drummers with the band, 5 to be exact, with the latest drummer having been added to the band on their previous album 'The Tower'. Tomas Jarmyr remains in place on this album also. The album is only comprised of 3 tracks, but they are all epic which the last one being over 20 minutes long. The overall sound is an exciting blend of classic progressive with some stoner rock mixed in.

'Psychotzar' starts with a heavy riff similar to early 'Black Sabbath'. The sound is dark and heavy and during the chorus, you can also hear mellotron in there. After two verses, there is that trademark fuzz guitar solo that we know and love from Motorpsycho already. The vocals are then processed a bit to give that psychedelic sound as it enters a different theme. Excellent guitar solos split the verses up before it goes into a longer instrumental break which shows off their progressive yet stoner edge. Things calm down at around the 5:30 mark and become more mysterious sounding and vocals return on yet a 3rd theme. It soon intensifies and the theme is repeated at a higher volume with more guitar support and a progressive riff is built upon until the end.

'Lux Aeterna' begins with acoustic guitar and harmonized vocals with the melody being a bit more complex than you might expect. This track builds a bit with more of a progressive sound with a slight folk feel. Its hard to believe all of this music, which is somewhat sympohonic is made by 3 guys, but there you have it. There is some brass in there which definitely isn't hidden, more keyboards are also prevalent in this track. The track has a more early King Crimson vibe to it, but of course without really copying anything, that comparison is just there to give you an idea. Very nice. Before the 5 minute mark, there is a heavier sound as the theme changes and this section becomes a lot more complex and chaotic, still keeping that early KC vibe, and doing it quite well I might add. Brass and guitar fight and argue together as the mellotron anchors it all together. Before 7 minutes, everything evens out to a slower tempo as the guitar improvises and churns up a bit more intensity in a soaring solo. After 8 minutes, it all calms down again returning to the soft feel at the beginning with harmonized vocals again. A minute later, you think the track is over, but it bursts into quite a cinematic ending with everything playing around the theme.

'The Crucible' continues with the epic feel of the tracks on this album with this 20+ minute monster. After a quick build, the guitar, aided by some keyboards, build upon a theme while drums work to build intensity. After a while, this resolves and then builds upon another theme, this one more in the line of space rock. Once things reach a plateau, the guitar improvises around the theme again. The bass is definitely more noticeable in this track also. Things calm again and everything works around a new theme. Vocals don't come in until around 5:30. The lyrics are more important on this track and the verses are quite long, are more progressive and have much more depth. Just before the 10 minute mark, a loud and psychedelic guitar solo and dissonant drone breaks loose. Heaviness ensues and it sounds excellent! The solo guitar wails against the wall of noise surrounding it like a banshee trying to break loose of it's chains. Suddenly, after the 13 minute mark, things level out as vocals start again backed up by the band and keyboards, then that suddenly drops off to almost ambience as things get pianissimo for a minute. There is then a sudden outburst as a new section is quickly introduced and the guitar gets another grand solo. At 17 minutes, everything culminates to the original theme backed with the band and more mellotron. Things eventually return to calmness but intensity quickly builds and the band gets one more last finale before the end as everything resolves around a major chord and a bright ending.

This is really a good album by Motorpsycho, and they still retain their progressive edge while they mix in that more stoner feel from their earlier days, but it still sounds amazing. I was never one to complain about the length of Motorpsycho's albums when they are at their best, like the album 'Behind the Sun' because I can listen to that style of music all day. But this album is definitely too short and I feel it might have been a bit rushed. I still feel it is one of the best albums so far this year, just not quite as good as it could have been. The band has raised the bar so much in the past, it's hard not to rate their albums against their best, which is usually what happens when reviewing a band like this. Anyway, it is definitely worth your while to hear this album. Great music, excellent album, but not quite their best.

The Norwegian trio's 22nd studio album release comes in as their shortest album since 2009, spanning a vinyl-paradigm mere 40 minutes. New drummer Tomas Järmyr (this is only his second album with the band) continues to impress while getting his groove on.

1. "Psychotzar" (8:43) surprisingly simple and ragged in its construction, performance, polish, and engineering--all areas that are usually mega-strongpoints for the band. Sounds like a live jam by a 1970s hard rock band that is on its last days of a nine-month tour. (17/20) 2. "Lux Aeterna" (10:56) starts out like a sensitive acoustic guitar accompanied folk ballad. The support vocals are stupendous--as are the presence of the reeds. I even like the dirty sound of heavy distortion on the bass and guitars and Tomas Järmyr's drumming is really loose and fresh, filled with expressive nuances. He's really getting comfortable within the trio format. Great song construct; much in contrast to the previous muck up. Great final three minutes and ending. The only weakness I feel is in the vocal presentation of the lyrics: not always a great match considering the metaphysical message they seem to be trying to convey. Also, I'm not a huge fan of the reckless abandon used by the soloists in the seventh minute. Otherwise I'm a big fan of this one. (18.5/20)

3. "The Crucible" (20:52) I love this start: it's very dramatic, suspenseful. By the second minute the full band has launched their commitments to the song (all of which are considerable--especially drummer Tomas Järmyr's!). Things quiet down at 2:20 but only as a kind of rewind to restart everything and get to that same energy level while maintaining the same intensity. It doesn't take long upon reestablishing the pace and force for the guitarist to post a tasteful solo which then evolves into a kind of weave until everybody stops at 4:37 to start a brand new motif. A melodic (and, I have to admit, familiar) guitar chord progression starts up to which the bass and second guitar add their support so that the vocals can begin. Nice vocal melody line starts up, fitting nicely into the guitar chord sequence (which continues). Drums join in--again in support, nobody doing anything flashy at this point, thus allowing the vocal to have the listener's full attention. There is a subtle shift into a new melody line at the nine-minute mark while the vocals continue (shifting accordingly). At the end of that tenth minute the instrumentalists ramp up their performances, getting heavier and thickening the overall soundscape with some Mellotron. The guitar soloing in the thirteenth minute changes (guitarist #2 taking a turn?) developing into a more slide-like playing style. I'm not gonna lie: This has become kind of creepy. Choral vocals join in during the fourteenth minute, then everything stops, quiet piano, Mellotron, and lute-sounding instrument starting up a new, very quiet part--until, that is, the 15-minute mark when everybody kicks back in, creating a MOODY BLUES/"Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band" sounding instrumental passage. A rising octave arpeggio bridge in the eighteenth minute sets up a return to a previous motif for the vocals (now expressed through harmony choir) over an awesome NEKTAR/YES-like bass line. In the middle of the nineteenth minute everybody pauses, restarting with a YES "Perpetual Change"/Gates of Delirium"-like motif for the vocalists to close out the song over. (36/40)

Total Time 40:31

B+/4.5 stars; a near-masterpiece of heavy progressive rock music; something that every self-professed prog lover will probably like.

Released in 2019, The Crucible is the second instalment in Motorpsycho's "Gullvåg trilogy" of albums inspired by the art of painter Håkon Gullvåg, which the band started in 2017 with The Tower and will conclude in 2020 with The All Is One. While exploring similar lyrical themes (living in a polarized society) and moving in similar musical spaces (psychedelic-infused heavy prog), The Crucible stands out relative to the other two parts of the trilogy, in a number of ways.

First, clocking at about 40 minutes, it is by far the shortest album in the trilogy (both The Tower and The All Is One are double-albums that surpass the 80-minute mark). It contains only three tracks, albeit two of them (Lux Aeterna and the title-track) are nearly 11 and 21 minute long, respectively.

Second, it is certainly the heaviest record in the trio of albums. The stoner/doom/heavy prog influences (Black Sabbath above all) that characterized Motorpsycho's earlier records come back in a very prominent way on this album. This is different from The Tower and, especially The All Is One, which are instead proggier and more rock-oriented. This is not to say that The Crucible is lacking in prog credentials. On the contrary, the angular, fuzz-drenched instrumental acrobatics one can find on "Lux Aeterna" and "The Crucible" (the track) are reminiscent of the furious and fearless experimentation of early King Crimson. The interplay between reeds and guitars on "Lux Aeterna", for instance, is a particularly striking Crimsonian moment. The pervasive use of the mellotron is another element that brings to mind Robert Fripp's band. Elsewhere, the vocal harmonies conjured up by Bent Sæther and Hans Magnus Ryan remind us of Jon Anderson (listen for example to when the vocals kick in on the title-track). More generally, Yes's musical exuberance is another reference point for Motorpsycho's music. Yet, all these classic prog references are reinterpreted through a heavily metallic lens as well as with a distinct modern approach (Stian Westerhus comes to mind when one listens to the guitar-noise experiments on the title-track), which helps keep things fresh, contemporaneous and non-derivative.

The three tracks are well-balanced between vocal-driven parts and instrumental sections where the band loosens up and engages in long detours that have an improv flavor. There is nevertheless a sense of structure and discipline in the way these tracks are constructed, which makes them easy to assimilate and help the listener to remain focused throughout a song. This is particularly true on the two shorter pieces, "Psychotzar" and "Lux Aeterna", while the title-track is slightly more meandering and I think it may have benefitted from some fat trimming. Regardless of your level of endurance with lengthy instrumental acrobatics, the level of playing is dazzlingly good throughout the album.

Overall, The Crucible offers an enjoyable musical ride, especially if one is a fan of extended heavy psychedelic jams, which the album offers aplenty. Often this type of composition approach relies on that special spark to light up and infuse the music with magic. And while there are moments on the album where this is certainly the case, and the listener is left engrossed by the experience, elsewhere the approach feels a bit more earthbound and tiresome, which is why I cannot give this album more than three stars.

The second part of Motorpsycho's Gullvåg trilogy came about 2 years after The Tower, and in that time the band went on to release 3 live albums in between, and toured quite a bit. That aside, their next album of The Crucible is quite an amazing, though interesting black sheep in the Gullvåg trilogy.

I consider this to be the black sheep of Motorpsycho's Gullvåg trilogy due to some factors, such as it being only a mere 40 minutes in length, and the fact it feels a lot closer in vein to their older early 90s sound than The Tower ever did. I think if the Tower was the spiritual successor of The Death Defying Unicorn, The Crucible is the spiritual successor to their first three albums of Lobotomizer, Demon Box, and Timothy's Monster. I say this since this album is very heavy, and I'd say it takes more cues from stoner rock and grunge than progressive rock, though this isn't without looking at the 20 minute titular epic.

The sound here has a lot of heavy riffs, trucking drums, and a very clear sense of massive scales, while still keeping things down to size. This is best shown with the first track of Psychotzar, which happens to be one of my favorite Motorpsycho tracks ever. It is so rambunctious, with an almost perfect layout and progression that makes it a joy to listen and go through in my opinion. I also have to take a moment to give my appreciation to the two other tracks of Lux Aeterna, and the title track as they showcase tiny moments of more progressive rock flavors here, with the title track obviously gonna be the most evident of this as it composes this lofty jam that is similar to Gullible Travails from Heavy Metal Fruit, though with a clearer focus on jamming, and I think this more hard hitting sound being a more primary focus here than the proggy aspect of it all actually makes this one of my favorite Motorpsycho albums.

I think Motorpsycho, as a band, can totally make sounds like this not only work in most contexts, but in most progressive rock ideals. While the more intricate proggy sounds take a backseat, I think this album still has some amazing performances, and as such I don't really mind.

This is quite an underrated album. Sure, compared to The Tower and The All Is One it might not be the most grand adventure, nor is it the longest, but even then when you have 3 tracks that are pretty much all stellar in sound and layout, I think this record should get a bit more love, because I certainly think it is one the band's most endearing records yet.

There isn't anything about this album that I don't like. This is easily a top five MOTORPSYCHO album for me and I look forward to doing that list in the future. This is also a top five for 2019's Album of the Year list. This is just over 40 minutes long and heavy. And only three tracks including the almost 21 minute self-titled closer. I have to say the new drummer who arrived with their previous album "The Tower" is very impressive. And the art work! Has to be the Pharoah and the Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea.

"Psychotzar" opens the album at almost 9 minutes and riffs hit us right away like getting rabbit-punched and vocals follow. Vocals come and go as the beating continues. Guitar solo after 2 minutes then almost mono-toned vocals before 3 1/2 minutes out of the riffage. More guitar solos then a calm after 5 1/2 minutes. They start to amp it up again after 7 minutes. Great start!

"Lux Aeterna" at almost 11 minutes has some guest reeds on it and female vocals. There's this cool section where the music swells and it's very uplifting after 2 minutes and around 4 minutes and then very late as well. Some intensity on this one as well. The guitar lights it up a few times. Some good contrasts here.

The closer is something else and a surprising nod to KING CRIMSON that pops up around 2 1/2 minutes and late before 17 minutes. Some nice upfront bass here at times. But it's the heaviness, love this stuff. Lots of calms to contrast with the powerful moments. This record took me by surprise I must say. Love at first listen. My music.