Master And The Mule - The View From Nowhere (Album Review)
Thursday, 07 June 2012
Written by Ben Bland
Having changed their name from Immune back in 2009, it has taken a while for Master & the Mule to get a new album out. With the exception of the odd well received track on their bandcamp page, things have been pretty quiet from the Leeds based quartet. 'The View from Nowhere' therefore marks a hugely important watershed in their career. The pressure is most certainly on.
Do they live up to it? Well, to be honest, it is actually quite hard to say. If you are a fan of Tool and spend half your time listening to Oceansize and crying about the fact that they aren’t still together (I’m hanging around the back of the room sticking my hand up to that one) then you may well find something to love here. Master & the Mule definitely have some very good ideas. Take the eerie atmosphere crafted by the introduction to ''Mekanum' or the Cardiacs-esque touches to 'Kingdom'. There has clearly been a lot of thought put into this music. To use a horrible term in a horribly appropriate fashion, this is perhaps what you would call ‘thinking man’s metal’.
Unfortunately however, Master & the Mule don’t quite manage to pull out a series of genuine gems on this debut album. Whilst the music is performed, and indeed composed, to a high technical standard, there is always a niggling sense that something more could be made out of almost every track on this record. Take the aforementioned 'Mekanum'. It should be the crowning glory of the album but spends too much of its time thinking about whether or not to fully take off instead of just going for it without dilly-dallying. As a result its effectiveness is dramatically halved. It sums up 'The View from Nowhere' in a nutshell. Every song is so calculated that none of them really feel like they have a life of their own, they don’t progress naturally in the same way as they really should.
There is also the problem of identity. Master & the Mule never feel like their own band, no matter how hard they try. The spectres of their influences are always hanging over them. Take 'Eyesore' as the prime example. That heavy riff section halfway through sounds far too much like a dead ringer for Porcupine Tree’s 'Anesthetize' to me, and the opening of 'Camouflage' is very similar to the shoegazey breakdown partway through Oceansize’s 'You Can’t Keep a Bad Man Down'. It is hard to criticise the band for wearing their influences on their sleeves, especially because if I was trying to write this type of music I know that I would do exactly the same. At some point though, the band do need to sound like nobody else but themselves; sadly that never happens.
To summarise this album then becomes an extremely difficult task. My heart tells me that this is a fine debut record and one that deserves many listeners because it is exactly what some ‘modern prog’ fans will really want to hear. However this is a review, so my head is always likely to win out…and that is telling me that this is not distinctive enough to make a real impression, which is a massive shame.
'The View from Nowhere' is out now via Master & the Mule’s bandcamp page (www.masterandthemule.bandcamp.com). Give it a go; it’s only £3 so you would have to be a cold hearted Coldplay fan to not do so.
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Do they live up to it? Well, to be honest, it is actually quite hard to say. If you are a fan of Tool and spend half your time listening to Oceansize and crying about the fact that they aren’t still together (I’m hanging around the back of the room sticking my hand up to that one) then you may well find something to love here. Master & the Mule definitely have some very good ideas. Take the eerie atmosphere crafted by the introduction to ''Mekanum' or the Cardiacs-esque touches to 'Kingdom'. There has clearly been a lot of thought put into this music. To use a horrible term in a horribly appropriate fashion, this is perhaps what you would call ‘thinking man’s metal’.
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