Following
the well-mocked footsteps of bands like Slipknot, Mushroomhead
and Mudvayne, is a band called Motograter. Filling in a second
stage slot on this year's Ozzfest, Motograter is a sextet
of painted nu metallers.
Much
like Mushroomhead, Motograter employs two singers to exchange
the vocal duties. Unlike the Cleveland octet, Motograter has
no bass guitar but uses an instrument named-no-so-coincidentally
the motograter. While the scrap metal-made instrument may
look quite different, it sounds rather like a chunkier bass.
And, despite naming the band after the thing, the motograter
isn't heard from any more than a bass is in other groups of
this ilk.
Motograter
sadly does little to distinguish themselves from other groups
on their self-titled debut cd. The Texans' brand of metal
is passable considering their genre, but they take few chances
over the 11 tracks.
The
first two songs on the album, "Suffocate" and "Down" are unrelenting
nu metal tracks. They are good for what they are, and rather
catchy, but songs like these can be found on many other music
industry releases in the last few years.
Between
each track is a 15-30 second interlude of noise - feedback,
alarms or distorted movie quotes. While they are quite annoying
and help take away from (rather than contribute to) the flow
of the album, they are worth dealing with to get to "No Name".
Midway through the album, "No Name" is the one surprise. Despite
unnecessarily hard choruses, the song has a sweet melody to
it with powerful, clean vocals. Sadly it is one of the only
songs (along with "Down") that deserve any kind of recognition.
The
body painting and motograter are interesting touches that
make the band a different-than-the-norm live show. But, for
Motograter to stand out from the piles of nu metal refuse,
they will have to start concentrating on differentiating and
improving their music.
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