With almost thirty years on the music scene, Norwegian heavyweights (in more senses than one) Motorpsycho has been classified in almost any musical form that you can imagine, from heavy metal to progressive and psychedelic. Something to do with the name I guess.
But such cross classification mainly lied in the fact that the band actually did cover practically any genre imaginable, and with the new double album The Tower, they still do.
Producing practically an album per year for the last decade, it would be very hard to pick one that you could name as a failure. There could have been a song here and there, that you could name as a personal miss, but that was about it.
Nothing changes much in that respect on The Tower, except that the long-time drummer Kenneth Kapstad left, letting founders Bent Sæther and Hans Magnus Ryan find a new beat merchant in Tomas Järmyr.
The trick worked, since it would be really hard to pinpoint a track on this double album that you could call a dud. And again, Motorpsycho cover the whole gamut of musical styles they usually do. This time though the accent is more on progressive rock akin to Yes minus the unnecessary bombast and flashiness that band used to exhibit, with added touches of early King Crimson and latter day Soft Machine.
You do get touches of heavy metal combined with Beach Boys harmonies (“Bartok of the Universe”) and even Led Zeppelin re-arrangement(s) (the intro to A.S.F.E.) and the usual Floyd inspired psych tendencies, sometimes with CSN&Y as an added bonus (“Stardust”).
But what is key is that it all works and at no time do you get the impression that the music you are listening to lasts over two hours. With all the style shifts you still feel that the album represents a unified whole. In a way, you can freely say it is a progressive rock album for those music fans that don’t fancy progressive rock.
I’ve no idea how long Motorpsycho can keep on going like this, hopefully, this creative patch of theirs can last a bit longer.
