Press
Two years after first coming together, Boston's Motherboar wade into the murky waters of the post-stoner rock pool with this raucous, sludgy, unapologetically heavy seven track mini-LP. Clearly inspired by ageless heavy rock mavericks such as Motorhead, Crowbar and Clutch, the quintet specializes in surprisingly memorable songs that are short, concise, but filled with frequent dynamic twists and turns. Prime examples like "Ode to Swine," "Get Inside," "Dead by Dawn," and the title track show that the band are as comfortable chugging along to slow and groovy Clutch-like riffs, as they are thrashing out like retro-metal contemporaries The Sword. Guitarists Pete Knipfing and Brian Connor lead the charge throughout with crunchy riff-rhythms and well-placed solos, as fluid as Chicago underground favorites Bible of the Devil, while vocalist Kenny Irwin employs the sort of gruff, melody-free style that's not likely to get these songs played on the radio, but ensures that his often amusing lyrics in "Thundadome," "Imperial Lagerbalyde," are "Terrordactyl" are, at the very least, always intelligible. And it doesn't take a specialist to realize that Motherboar are a band built to play on stage, and to that end, Raise the Death Toll provides an ideal warm up for fans of post-stoner metal to catch them in concert.
Eduardo Rivadavia