It’s long been established that one of the things I love to do in my spare time is just click my way through Bandcamp and look for random acts to listen to. Every now and then one catches my eye and this latest act is no exception. Toronto natives Mount Abora released their self-titled debut album in February this year and present a brash take on mathcore for your listening pleasure.
Kicking off with “Plague Mind”, you’re immediately thrown into Mount Abora’s discordant and chaotic world, with riffs that really shouldn’t work together just slammed into a blender by guitarists Oliver Honsberger and Carl Pike, and somehow they do fit. It may take a bit of time to be able to decipher just what is going on, but once it clicks (held together admirably by the rhythm section of Trevor Walker on bass and Isaac Nicoletto on drums) it does feel like a rather refreshing take on a genre that’s often attempted but rarely executed well. The album is full of this sort of violent disregard for rhythm and melody, with tracks such as “Artificial Earth” and “Carrying Constellation” in particular showcasing the complicated songwriting these guys seem to revel in.
However, unlike many a mathcore band before them, Mount Abora don’t fall into the trap of being technical for the sake of being technical, and other tracks in the album put a lot more focus into the other aspects of song writing, such as melody and dynamics. “Astral Vacation” focuses more on the brute force style of riff, taking things back to basics, before shifting into a calmer, more progressive second half. It never hurts to have a bit of versatility in your songwriting, as it prevents your writing from becoming too repetitive or off-putting for casual listeners, and sometimes the mark of a good musician is the ability to step back and make things simpler rather than always pushing to make things more technical, such as in the plodding “Hollow Earth”. Even then, tracks like “Reality Slip!” can show an element of technicality without going overboard, with stop-start riffing and trippy leads following a slow building introduction and gradually building in intensity over time. Mount Abora know when the right moment is to hold back, and when the time is right to go crazy, and they’ve got a decent grasp of how to pace an album here with the quality never really dipping from the opener “Plague Mind” right through to 7 minute closing track “Essence Fervor”.
With all that said, there is always room for improvement. Vocalist Brenden Badham doesn’t have an awful lot of versatility in his voice and tends to scrape the linings of his vocal chords to hit the more aggressive screams. While his technique overall seems pretty good and his screams complement Honsberger and Pike’s temperamental riffs, it would really help if he was able to add an extra dimension to his vocal performances to match the dynamic shifts of the music, as his clean vocals are very rare on this album (appearing on occasion only in the second half of the album) and aren’t really the strongest, and could definitely improve with practice. Then there’s the fact that the album opens with possibly the most chaotic tracks – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t reflect the overall scope of the album as much as it could and there is a likelihood that throwing those two in at the start will alienate potential listeners who need to be eased into this genre of music.
In the end, of course, this is Mount Abora’s first effort, so there will always be little issues here and there. That doesn’t prevent it from being an extremely impressive array of tracks with some excellent musicianship on show. They already have a good range to work with and can only build on that further as they mature as a unit together. If you like your music chaotic and progressive but unafraid to go back to basics once in a while, Mount Abora are definitely worth checking out.
Stream and download the album below, and follow Mount Abora on Facebook.
Kicking off with “Plague Mind”, you’re immediately thrown into Mount Abora’s discordant and chaotic world, with riffs that really shouldn’t work together just slammed into a blender by guitarists Oliver Honsberger and Carl Pike, and somehow they do fit. It may take a bit of time to be able to decipher just what is going on, but once it clicks (held together admirably by the rhythm section of Trevor Walker on bass and Isaac Nicoletto on drums) it does feel like a rather refreshing take on a genre that’s often attempted but rarely executed well. The album is full of this sort of violent disregard for rhythm and melody, with tracks such as “Artificial Earth” and “Carrying Constellation” in particular showcasing the complicated songwriting these guys seem to revel in.
However, unlike many a mathcore band before them, Mount Abora don’t fall into the trap of being technical for the sake of being technical, and other tracks in the album put a lot more focus into the other aspects of song writing, such as melody and dynamics. “Astral Vacation” focuses more on the brute force style of riff, taking things back to basics, before shifting into a calmer, more progressive second half. It never hurts to have a bit of versatility in your songwriting, as it prevents your writing from becoming too repetitive or off-putting for casual listeners, and sometimes the mark of a good musician is the ability to step back and make things simpler rather than always pushing to make things more technical, such as in the plodding “Hollow Earth”. Even then, tracks like “Reality Slip!” can show an element of technicality without going overboard, with stop-start riffing and trippy leads following a slow building introduction and gradually building in intensity over time. Mount Abora know when the right moment is to hold back, and when the time is right to go crazy, and they’ve got a decent grasp of how to pace an album here with the quality never really dipping from the opener “Plague Mind” right through to 7 minute closing track “Essence Fervor”.
With all that said, there is always room for improvement. Vocalist Brenden Badham doesn’t have an awful lot of versatility in his voice and tends to scrape the linings of his vocal chords to hit the more aggressive screams. While his technique overall seems pretty good and his screams complement Honsberger and Pike’s temperamental riffs, it would really help if he was able to add an extra dimension to his vocal performances to match the dynamic shifts of the music, as his clean vocals are very rare on this album (appearing on occasion only in the second half of the album) and aren’t really the strongest, and could definitely improve with practice. Then there’s the fact that the album opens with possibly the most chaotic tracks – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t reflect the overall scope of the album as much as it could and there is a likelihood that throwing those two in at the start will alienate potential listeners who need to be eased into this genre of music.
In the end, of course, this is Mount Abora’s first effort, so there will always be little issues here and there. That doesn’t prevent it from being an extremely impressive array of tracks with some excellent musicianship on show. They already have a good range to work with and can only build on that further as they mature as a unit together. If you like your music chaotic and progressive but unafraid to go back to basics once in a while, Mount Abora are definitely worth checking out.
Stream and download the album below, and follow Mount Abora on Facebook.