Line Out Music & the City at Night

  |  

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Album / 206 Get a Load of This: MTNS' All Songs Are Spells

Posted by on Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 4:30 PM

Seattle duo MTNS have erected a cacophonous universe on their new six-song mini album, All Songs Are Spells. This is noise rock as artful catharsis: Daniel Enders' beats have the calamitous impact of death blows and butchers' cleavers; Austin Hund's bass and violin alternately wail like infernal clarion calls and grunt like overworked musk oxen. (It's apropos that Flying Luttenbachers drummer Weasel Walter mastered the record. If anyone can harness chaos in the studio, it's WW.)

There's a clear lineage back to Lightning Bolt in MTNS' fulsome, jagged blasts of skronk and no-wave whirlwinds that change directions on a rusty dime and sucker punch your lights out over and over. But the closing "Hut on a High Peak" proves that MTNS have some finesse, too, and a surprising knack for melodic majesty; it sounds like a Scottish folk tune blown out way over the Highlands. These songs are a fantastic approximation of MTNS' explosive live shows. The only downside is now my ears are scorched and bleeding.

All Songs Are Spells comes out March 12—not on Load Records, but it should.

Check out a video for "Spoken Potions" directed by Pony Time's Stacy Peck after the jump.

MTNS // SPOKEN POTIONS from stacy peck on Vimeo.

 

Comments (5) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment
Grant Brissey, Emeritus 1
Hell yez.
Posted by Grant Brissey, Emeritus http://www.grantropolis.com/ on March 6, 2013 at 6:39 PM
Dean Fawkes 2
Musicians still think a lack of vowels is interesting, thirteen years after XTRMNTR.
Posted by Dean Fawkes http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Author?oid=479789&section=Blogs on March 6, 2013 at 11:05 PM
LEE. 3
@2

I think it's because regular "Mountains" is taken, bruh.
Posted by LEE. on March 7, 2013 at 12:55 AM
4
"Shrill Eyes..." would be the perfect soundtrack for this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uor-ugwdX….
Posted by MonkeyRobot on March 7, 2013 at 2:52 PM
Dean Fawkes 5
I await KRFTWRK, TH SMTHS, and TH RLLNG STNS.
Posted by Dean Fawkes http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Author?oid=479789&section=Blogs on March 7, 2013 at 7:24 PM

Add a comment

 

Want great deals and a chance to win tickets to the best shows in Seattle? Join The Stranger Presents email list!


All contents © Index Newspapers, LLC
1535 11th Ave (Third Floor), Seattle, WA 98122
Contact Info | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Takedown Policy