Mother Superior

"Sin"
(Muscletone Records)

Here's a band that's let their music do the talking for a number of years, clubbin' the club-goers with their Heavy Rock, zip-jack defiance, throwin' back to the likes of The Allmans, Foghat, Free, Zeppelin, and early, early Coverdale with an indispensably "classic" Marshall-soaked, assumedly "analog" sound that's simply too much weight to bear for mainstream notoriety. Workmanlike, Mother Superior's fifth record leaves off where their fourth did, and where the one before it did-read, unaffected by the changing climate, straight and narrow Rock and Roll sincerity not seen since the G n' R glory days and "Sin," another eleven reasons why we decided to pick up a guitar in the first place, learn to sing, or disregard authority... We know 'em better today by such static-charged soul-dripping standards as a Queens Of The Stone Age, er, "Hippie-Rock" with impassioned vocals, clean delivery a and tunefully played AM radio ballads and L.A. reared Southern gentlemen style. Known in recent years as the backing band for one Henry Rollins, no surprise in the angry one's resurgence into the realm of Roots-Rock and Blues, the instrumental element and catchy chorus attributably admirable amidst an otherwise hard-to-the-core menacing presence. There's a lot to like about Mother Superior starting with a no bullshit, easy to reach, toe-tapping, solid ground appeal-driven by guitar grooves and half beats without a trace of flightiness-at least till we make it to their eleven minute epic turned thrash fit, "Fade Out, Wounded Animal,"-they're well founded and maybe too good for their own good. they just don't make 'em like this anymore!

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