3 out of 5
Label: Spinefarm Records
Produced by: Royal Thunder, Tom Tapley
‘Rebuilding the Mountain’ finds Royal Thunder, over a decade into their run, both dialing in their sound – somewhat out of necessity, going back down to a trio with the departure of guitarist Will Fiore – and allowing it to spread out, digging into their toolbox of blues and heavy rock to find some ambience to sprinkle atop. As such, the ‘rebuild’ never quite finds a peak, but the base is so remarkably solid, it’s impressive nonetheless.
From a technical perspective, Fiore’s loss is felt: while the decision to be more tempered with their music was surely purposeful, nothing here really defines a particular sound – the group is playing in to / exploring more typical rock spaces. The song structures, while appreciably loose (tracks notably flow into one another, and don’t push for strict verse-chorus-verse setups), are extensibly lacking some definition, but not to an extent that that looseness becomes definitive. You emerge from the listen with a sense of the overall vibe, but not a single in mind. Part of this I might put to new producer Tom Tapley, who has a storied list of credits, but quite a lot of it is stacked more towards radio rock, and that may have encouraged a smoothness in the overall sound – though I can imagine that same guidance as being what allowed the group to come together again and find the material on offer.
Snaking through this are Mountain’s enduring qualities, though: it’s very atmospheric, and quite mesmerizing, with Mlny Parsonz’s howl massaged into the glittering chord strums and bursts of bass beats and percussion; that aforementioned flow is not easily come by, as the individual tracks can each have quite different paces and feelings, and yet the stitching is pretty seamless. And in support of Tapley’s take, I think the production does benefit the relatively simplified approach, as it allows Royal Thunder to still sit within their bluesy / psych realm by dint of how spacious the sound comes across – it flexes a few ways, plus and minus: if you listen too hard, the songs are fairly simple; at a surface level, this is all very accessible, mid-90s-vibed alt-rock; but somewhere inbetween, the life-hardened struggles told by Parsonz’s lyrics stand out, and an earned and learned groove of three longtime bandmates can be heard, everyone syncing up and being comfortable with exploring this middleground.
