King Mothership has a very interesting history as a project. Formed of Spencer Sotelo (Periphery, Nik Mystery) on vocals, guitar and keyboards, Matt Halpern (Periphery) on drums and Tai Wright (ex-Slaves [US], ex-D.R.U.G.S.) on bass and primarily written and produced by Sotelo, it’s a project whose official debut has been highly anticipated by die-hard fans of Sotelo and Halpern’s main band. The Ritual, the project’s debut album, has been several years in the making and now it’s finally been unleashed into the world in its complete form. It’s a full-on concept album too according to Sotelo, although he’s been scant on the specific details of the story leading up to the album’s release. Was it worth the wait? I pressed play and gave it a go…
After the short intro track ‘Hope’ that sets the mood well, we launch into the Disney-flavoured high energy romp that is ‘Cosmic Meltdown’. As the first full track on the album it couldn’t be a better start. Starting off with huge Elton John-esque piano chords, it drops into a relentless chord progression that supports Sotelo’s incredible as always vocals through the song. The extra-creepy middle section gives us a bit of a taste of what’s to come later on in the album too!
‘Cosmic Meltdown’ is followed by ‘Gold’, a song that sounds like a heavy metal version of Jamiroquai with its jazzy piano chords, organ stabs, choral pads and loud guitars. Sotelo pulls out all the stops on this song too, delivering a vocal performance that very much evokes Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay as well as more theatrical rock singers like Craig Owens and Foxy Shazam’s Eric Nally. The only big downside of this song is the decidedly very cheap-sounding sax/woodwind solo in the middle, which sounds like it was done using a basic plugin. I can forgive that though somewhat, considering that the album was likely made on an absolute shoestring budget and hiring a session player to record that part with real woodwinds could have been a pretty expensive proposition!
‘Gold’ segues straight into ‘Only You’, a short song (it’s only 2:49 long) that carries on a similar style to ‘Gold’ but dips much more into glam rock and Muse-y territory. That leads into the hilariously-titled ‘Babby’ that dips very much into the album’s influences from Muse and Queen to create a brilliant ultra-theatrical pop-rock song that lilts unnervingly from note to note.
The short, twisted lullaby ‘Goodnight My Darling’ is one of the album’s stand-out moments, seeing Sotelo dip fully into Devin Townsend territory before moving back into heavier territory with the punchy riffs of ‘Death Machine’. This track is one of the album’s grooviest, as well as one of the most foreboding; Sotelo sings with as much range as he can muster about the evils of the music industry as prog metal riffs and jazzy drums swirl around him. Some of you might recognise a few musical similarities to Periphery’s ‘Feed The Ground’ and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was totally deliberate!
Thought you’d heard the end of the Disney-esque stuff with the opening track? Well that all comes back again with ‘The Ritual’. It’s pretty much a Disney villain song in the vein of ‘Be Prepared’ from The Lion King or ‘Playing With The Big Boys’ from Prince of Egypt, lurching bombastically as Sotelo bellows proclamations from on high. Well, that’s until the song enters full-on extreme metal territory around the middle with pummelling heavy guitars, demonic screams and even a fairly rare moment of blast beats from Halpern in one section! There’s also a very cool moment during the heavy metal section where the vocal melody from the verse of ‘Cosmic Meltdown’ is reprised. A chaotic fully electronic section ends ‘The Ritual’, setting up nicely for the full-on metal of ‘Ego 101’.
‘Ego 101’ gives absolutely no illusions as to what it is. It’s a speedy heavy metal track with driving bass and drums, post-hardcore riffs and what is quite possibly the biggest chorus on the entire album where Sotelo launches into full Matt Bellamy territory in the most glorious way possible. You better hold onto your hats again after that song though, because it’s about to get funky again with ‘The Devil’s Train’! Diving back into the Jamiroquai meets metal sound that we previously heard on ‘Gold’, ‘The Devil’s Train’ is a ridiculously fun song about sex, drugs and rock’n’roll with danceable verses and a huge heavy metal chorus, with a saccharine happy middle section in there just to throw you into the unnervingly creepy vibe that this album has in spades. There’s even a cheeky little guitar solo in there too!
After another short interlude track ‘Imminent Distortion’ that shows off a lot of influence from industrial rock acts like Nine Inch Nails and Marylin Manson, we get to the epic 8-minute closing track ‘I Stand Alone’. Built around Devin Townsend-style arpeggiated guitar lines, it’s a brilliant heavy metal closer to an album that’s been a hell of a journey! It also features a fantastic guest guitar solo from Australian prog metal virtuoso Plini. Whilst putting such a lengthy track at the end of an album that’s otherwise comprised of fairly short songs could be seen as a bit of a weird choice, ‘I Stand Alone’ is well-written enough for it to completely make sense both as a standalone song and in the context of the whole album.
Is The Ritual a perfect album? It definitely isn’t. A lot of the non guitars, bass and drums instruments can sound very much like programmed midi instruments at times. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely. Compositionally it’s absolutely fantastic, swerving between and flirting with all sorts of different genres expertly and telling a brilliant story through the music as you move through the tracks. I think Sotelo, Halpern and Wright can definitely be very proud of what they’ve achieved with The Ritual. Reportedly Sotelo is already working on the writing for a second album, so I have very high hopes for how that’ll turn out!
Words by Robert Percy
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