Release Date: June 24, 2003
Reviewed by Scott Olivenbaum
Following the well-mocked footsteps of bands like Slipknot, Mushroomhead and Mudvayne, is a band called Motograter. Filling in a second stage slot on this year’s Ozzfest, Motograter is a sextet of painted nu metallers.
Much like Mushroomhead, Motograter employs two singers to exchange the vocal duties. Unlike the Cleveland octet, Motograter has no bass guitar but uses an instrument named-no-so-coincidentally the motograter. While the scrap metal-made instrument may look quite different, it sounds rather like a chunkier bass. And, despite naming the band after the thing, the motograter isn’t heard from any more than a bass is in other groups of this ilk.
Motograter sadly does little to distinguish themselves from other groups on their self-titled debut cd. The Texans’ brand of metal is passable considering their genre, but they take few chances over the 11 tracks.
The first two songs on the album, “Suffocate” and “Down” are unrelenting nu metal tracks. They are good for what they are, and rather catchy, but songs like these can be found on many other music industry releases in the last few years.
Between each track is a 15-30 second interlude of noise – feedback, alarms or distorted movie quotes. While they are quite annoying and help take away from (rather than contribute to) the flow of the album, they are worth dealing with to get to “No Name”. Midway through the album, “No Name” is the one surprise. Despite unnecessarily hard choruses, the song has a sweet melody to it with powerful, clean vocals. Sadly it is one of the only songs (along with “Down”) that deserve any kind of recognition.
The body painting and motograter are interesting touches that make the band a different-than-the-norm live show. But, for Motograter to stand out from the piles of nu metal refuse, they will have to start concentrating on differentiating and improving their music.
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