Mother of Fire

Minneapolis band Mother of Fire’s eponymous record is a dark, almost terrifying musical journey. The band uses a fiercely unrelenting combination of caustic violin, guitar distortion, and bass/drum rhythms to convey a haunting sense of dread that marks each of the LP’s six tracks. Imagine the scene from Temple of Doom where the cult leader plucks out his human sacrifice’s heart – except that in place of a chanting Thuggee army you instead have Naomi Joy, a force of nature on the violin whose fiery vocals give the sound the menace of a thousand Steven Spielberg bad-guys.

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In tunes like “Death’s Apprentice,” Joy’s vocals become increasingly distraught throughout the song’s dirge-like beat, culminating in the howling “na-na-na-na” chorus that then devolves into a staticky wall of distortion. My personal favorite, “Ghost of the Manzanita,” tunes down the background distortion a bit for an impressive display of violin virtuosity that ranges from a sleek Eastern European see-saw to a disparate array of fingering and far out squeals. And Joy’s singing dances around the instrumentation like a pyromaniac around a flame.

Lyrically Joy creates terrifying images that combine human elements with the forces of the natural world. Eight minute psychedelic epic “Tendrilled Mass” displays a talent for twisting the pastoral and horrifying together into unique wordplay. Elsewhere the vocals aren’t so much intelligible lyrics as they are raw emotive forces – a snarl, a howl, a sneer. Arguably the most intriguing effort on the LP is the (mostly) instrumental jam “Follow the Sun,” which twists violin, guitar, and a thick wash of reverb into a moody psychedelic ramble that clips along due to its propulsive rhythm. Rounding out the mix is bass-heavy mess “The Eyes in the Trees” as well as “Sudden Madness” which is exactly what it sounds like. [Jon Behm, Reviler]