Despite our nation being frequently associated with the development and furtherance of rock music, the so-called UK rock and roll spirit is at best a cliché. After all, in this age of hypernormalisation where fads and fashions spin faster than current world events, it’s been digested and regurgitated so many times it’s essentially a spit-up relic at odds with our post-irony culture. Straight up UK rock music, for all its merits, has been culturally recycled so many times it’s difficult to gauge its original value given the endless layers of irony applied to it. There’s some outliers that cut through, and Mother Vulture are one.
Hailing from Bristol, Mother Vulture are a fresh proposition. While the band peddle the kind of fuzzy riff rock that’s in line with the original raisers of the movement, to call them a simple UK rock band would be somewhat of a hilarious downplay. Instead, it would be more accurate to say that Mother Vulture are a rock band that take the styles of 2000s radio rock and approach it with a post-modernist sense and hyper-intense attitude. Essentially, they sound like The Dillinger Escape Plan playing Reef songs. Their debut, Mother Knows Best, showed this brilliantly, but it’s new record that truly sees Mother Vulture come into their own. If The Darkness were British rock music for the turn-of-the-millennium optimist age group, Cartoon Violence is British rock for the collapse generation.
As ‘Mike Check’ opens proceedings with a scream that wouldn’t be out of place on a Deafheaven record and a barrel of riffs that sound like Turbowolf on a heroic dose of caffeine, Cartoon Violence goes from naught to red lining on the highest gear in seconds. From there, the accelerator barely leaves the floor for the run time of the record. Frenzied, wide-eyed momentum is the core crux of this record, with the album maintaining a kind of pace that’s throttling to the point of it being self-destructive.
It’s impossible not to envision the nuts and bolts that hold this record together rattling and coming loose when Mother Vulture fly through this opening and proceeding gambit of ‘Sufferin’ Succotash!’ – which features the most intense fretwork the band have ever committed – and the aptly titled ‘Treadmill’ at speeds of above 120mph. But such is the point of this record. Whilst many second records see artists tightening the sounds of their debut, here, it’s the opposite. Mother Vulture have loosed their conjoining parts, softened the glue that holds them together and sacrificed structural integrity in favour of adding more nitromethane to their engine here. But it works.
In a way that’s spiritually reminiscent of bands like the aforementioned Dillinger, Heck and even Botch, Mother Vulture work best when they sprint with reckless abandon and disregard all safety rails in order to push themselves to their utter limits in the most loose and intense way possible. But that’s not to say this is 40 minutes of mindless haste for the sake of it. Nor is it to say that Cartoon Violence is a record that is only a split second away from crashing into the central reservation. Despite this being a reckless listen, this an album that does feel like it’s in control, and perhaps more importantly, self-aware.
Paradoxically, it’s the more palatable songs that make this most evident. ‘Slow Down’, like its name implies, sees the band take their foot off the gas, while they step up to the mantle of British arena rock with ‘The Masquerade’, and ‘Knuckles’ strips off musical layers to offer something more vulnerable. Yet it’s moments like these where we get further glimpses into what makes Cartoon Violence so great. The first of these songs sees the band tempering the speed to offer a riff so bludgeoning it gives Meshuggah a run for their money whilst ‘The Masquerade’ sounds like The Darkness leading a doomsday cult. As for ‘Knuckles’, the stripped rock affair sounds like the record’s most confrontational moment. It’s these moments where it’s clear that although Cartoon Violence is a product of the UK rock institution, it’s a record that deploys its conventions in order to present an album of that style for an era where violent intensity and extremity is just normalised. The record fully lives up to its name in that regard.
But whilst this wonderful record is recommended, there are moments where the band do struggle with the gears. For instance, its presentation; Cartoon Violence is interjected with interludes of radio chatter comparable to Queens Of The Stone Age’s Songs For The Deaf. Some may call it homage, others may call it redundant. As for the record’s de facto stadium rock moment, ‘Phoenix’, it feels like it doesn’t keep the pace of the record it’s slap bang in the middle of. The same could be said for the record’s finale, ‘Mountain Of Youth’ an empowering radio rock song that’s at odds with the record’s raging and burning drive. But still, these don’t detract from the overall brilliance of this album. This is a record perfect for a world now spinning on it’s axis so fast and precariously it’s surprising that we already haven’t been yeeted into the yawning void we’re seemingly destined to meet. And though UK rock may be something of a relic, it’s bands like Mother Vulture we’re going to need in order to revive its spirit for this post-future modern day.