Share THE GREEN RAY - Molten Universe (Off the Hip)
It's galling that this sort of music is down and out and nearly homeless in a big city like Sydney. Hard and focussed, this album is full of energy and unerringly locked in on its target, yet challenged to find its audience. Rock and roll is struggling to keep a foot-in places where it once flourished with too few rooms to play and audiences too fragmented. Most of them hail from a place about an hour south of the Harbour City where gigs are even thinner on the ground but Molten Universe surely deserve better.Molten Universe has its bloodlines in the Lime Spiders, but especially the Mick Blood-less hard rock heroics of Adolphus, the band formed while the Spiders singer was overseas on an extended holiday back in the mid-'80s. The constant for those bands is bassist Tony Bambach, who's assembled a collective of players for Moiten Universe. This is their second release and while it re-visits their EP and the Lime Spiders' back catalogue, it also takes a step forward.
Recorded in bursts with a seemingly floating line-up, "The Green Ray" should sound patchwork but doesn't. If there's a criticism, it's that at 25 minutes it clocks in too short. No complaints about what there is and you can always reach for the play button once it's over.
Opener "No Love Around" is an assertion: Molten Universe is not here to fuck around. It's reprised from the latter Spiders days and it's a more intense version. Ditto its bookended album closer, "Strange Kind of Love". Re-heated it might also be, but it's never sounded better. Bambach wrote both so he's re-claiming his own.
MU are no one-man band and the presence of guitarists Ged Corben (on most tracks) and Richard Jakimyszyn (one) impart a thick wall of six-strings that is impervious. Young bands would do well to take note. Corben's son Tom (a Lime Spiders recruit before the band recently wound up) shares drumming duties with old hand Phil "Sticks" Jacquet. Damien Stofka chips in on guitar.
"1323 BC", "Cousin Betty" and "Keep It Clean" establish a pattern of lean, hard rockers that's barely departed from. "Long Haired Woman" is an obscure cover (Killer Kane) that breaks the mould and takes a breath and sucks in some garage air, but for the most part it's a balls-out, deafening ride. - The Barman
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NO LOVE AROUND - Molten Universe (Off the Hip)
They're should be plenty of love around for this EP. Sydney's Adolphus were one of the bands that gigged all too infrequently in their second life. Originally a Lime Spiders spin-off that convened in the '80s while singer Mick Blood was off on an extended overseas trip, they re-appeared five or six years ago and are now around as Molten Universe.
Tony Bambach (bassist, vocalist and Chief organiser) gave us a heads-up on these six tracks a while back and they sounded mighty impressive. The recordings show a band in line-up transition with slightly tweaked line-ups (super-charged guitarist Richard Jakimyszyn is on three of the songs but is out of the ranks now apparently) but the sound's consistent.Re-vamped versions of the Spiders' "Strange Kind of Love" and "The Captor and The Captive One" lead off and Limey fans won't be disappointed. Bambach, drummer Phil Jacquet (Celibate Rifles, Voodoo Lust) and Ged Corben lay down an especially rich bed of sound on the former.
"No Love Around", "Voodoo Vibe" and "Bass Witch" are new songs, two of them co-written by Bambach and drummer Damien Stofka. "Voodoo" is a drugs tale with some exemplary guitarwork. Jakimyszyn squeezes out a frenzied lead-break and Bambach nails the vocal. "Voodoo Vibe" employs a mid-section breakdown that takes the song to distortion heaven. "Bass Witch" also stretches the sonic envelope and gives Corben a chance to break out the slide guitar to nice effect.
The mild surprise of a DEVO cover - the commercially-successful "Freedom of Choice" rather than one of their earlier comparative obscurities - shuts down the EP and works a treat with a rich (molten) undertow of distortion doing the business.
A album might have been great but this half-dozen will do for now. This is something that should appeal outside just the confines of once-upon-a-time Lime Spiders fans. - The Barman
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