Swedish band The Graviators are gaining a lot of press in the underground world and it seems that along with a particular brand of classic metal, these are being spoken of as the new leaders. It's not difficult to see why either, as the strength of Motherload is that it takes a once tired genre and finds completely new ways of invigorating it. It's been a while but it's good to see that bands are no longer afraid to embrace classic metal and raise it from the dead.
What makes Motherload so good are the little nuances throughout that lift it above many of its peers and bring a much more progressive bearing tot their sound. Not that you would notice this from opening track ‘Leif's Last Breath – Dance of the Valkyrie’, which takes all the classic tropes and regurgitates them for a new generation. It's on second track ‘Narrow Minded Bastards’ that the real fun begins.
With a riff that seems completely timeless and made for headbanging to, it gallops along resurrecting all those lost dreams of geeky Dungeons and Dragons mayhem that used to make this music so enjoyable. You can forget meaningful, we are in true Dio territory here and none the worse for it.
It's the spectre of Ronnie James Dio that looms large over The Graviators and in particular the great mans work with Rainbow and his own album Holy Diver. As ‘Tigress of Sibiria’ launches with its rumbling bass giving way to the psych blues guitar squeals one is brought to mind of some of those early epics that formed the basis of what metal became. It's meandering and tempo changes keep you on your toes throughout as The Graviators open up their music.
This is the point when the album becomes really special. ‘Lost Lord’ is epic yet restrained and full of those little nuances spoken of earlier. It has the hallmarks of a classic power ballad but never ever sinks into triteness or sentimentality and it also has a chorus begging to be sang by a million metalheads.
‘Drowned in Leaves’ is great too as it channels all the slow Sabbath songs and delivers a doom filled epic of its own laying the ground for the master-stroke that is ‘Eagles Rising’, which is pure fantasy throughout and seems like it has existed forever. These are long songs but none as long as the final one ‘Druid's Ritual’, which churns on forever before losing itself in some psychedelic swirl.
It's a long album, but never boring as there is so much going on. For once, the rumblings in the press may be right for once and we may actually have a band worthy of such attention. It's all happened before but at least The Graviators can back it up with what is a rather remarkable album. All hail the return of classic metal and all hail the new leaders The Graviators.
