Møster!: Bolts

Møster! has been blowing minds, woofers, and tweeters with their unique blend of Scandinavian noise-rock and psychedelic jazz-punk for six albums. It would be pointless to ask if this band is ready to take the next big leap forward, because they are not really trying to ascend any ladder. In fact, they are not climbing at all; they are hurtling down a mountain at full speed with a truckload of nitroglycerine. On their seventh album, Bolts, the band, which boasts members of Motorpsycho , Elephant9  and Needlepoint , is leaving scorched earth in their wake, white-knuckled and red-lining the whole way down to the bottom.

That white-knuckled journey starts immediately on "Desert Ride." Nikolai Hængsle's fuzz bass rattles the cabin and floorboards while Kjetil Møster's repeating sax riff stutters and shudders like a cold engine struggling to turn over. Once the ignition catches, they immediately peg the tachometer in the red, shifting into high gear as Kenneth Kapstad 's drums pound the ground below. Hans Magnus Ryan's blistering guitar work invokes the high whine of an engine as every bolt on the rig struggles to hold together, the gears grinding and smoke filling the air during their descent to the desert floor. This stunning 12-minute track is not pedal-to-the-metal the whole way—how could it be? The chassis would not hold together, and neither would the listener. There is beauty in this sonic maelstrom, in the way it charges forward and then pulls back, building tension and releasing it in a cacophony of noise. Did they finish the journey, or did they crash and burn?

On "Rippling Circles," Kapstad's drums and Hængsle's bass create a circling sensation, one leading, the other following, both rumbling, and by the time Møster's sax hits, we are inside a swirling sandstorm, covered in grit, barely able to see or breathe, until Ryan's guitar cuts through the darkness, providing a way out of the chaos, holding on for dear life, and being led to safety. The wailing of the sax and the shredding of the guitar produce a hallucinatory effect and a reminder of what a truly well-oiled piece of machinery this band is, and hint at what is to come next on the journey.

"Bearings," once again, has Ryan's psychedelic stoner guitar take center stage on this 10-minute freakout. Just as the song is building towards an epic conclusion, in a moment of deus ex machina, the hand of god reaches down and abruptly ends the sonic chaos, leaving us with a one-note drone as if the musicians have been pulled away, but their plugged-in instruments remain, droning on as feedback until the track ends, perhaps it is the sound of the amps melting down in the studio as it was being recorded, a fitting way to end the album.