Grotus

Mass (London)
by Scott Hefflon

A band that’s as creative with their music and message as they are with their use of umlauts (over the g, r, t, and s – the opposite as you’d think). While many is the band that incorporates technology to fatten up a song, few use such a vast diversity of lifted (and credited) material to serve such a wide range of purposes.

Mass begins with an eerily “Fascination Street” sound – smooth bass, poppy, new wavy drum, and phasing effects rolling everywhere – but when the guitar chomp comes in, it sounds more like Filth Pig Ministry. But Grotus supplies lyric sheets. The wheezing Delta Blues, vacuum sucking, static belches, and spacey sounds are used for all styles, from rock, to slacker rap, to tech metal and beyond. The unifying element, even in the tribal/lounge, near-techno, and samba explorations, is the dirty, thick voice of Lars Fox. Think Rob Zombie.

“Collect ‘Em All” is the one that, vocally, really struck me. Imagine an I Dream of Jeannie go-go-thon slipping into an early Pop Will Eat Itself Box Frenzy groove littered with Sepultura tribal percussion, when suddenly, Frank Zappa begins crooning the tale of a guy who flipped ’cause he hated waiting in line, being told where not to park, and wound up a crowd-pleasin’, high-rating media sensation, the latest addiction to the mass murderer collection card series. The chorus jumps in with a fist-pumpin’ Machines of Loving Grace melody before repeating (and repeating and repeating) the final riff to, I believe, the sound of a faucet dripping. And this is the same band with the dirty blues slack rap radio hit “Hand To Mouth.” By the tail end of Mass, I heard “Thunderkiss” turn into “The Miami Vice Theme Song” and then segue gracefully into a spaghetti Western. Yup. I’m done. That’s it.