A few tunes from these dudes horde the entire past of 70's heavy groove into a soccer mom's minivan. Their sonic diversity ends with the compositional arrangements of the songs themselves just like other current cream of the crop trios like SUPLECS, DIXIE WITCH, HONKY and AMPLIFIED HEAT. Make no mistake this is vocals, guitar, bass, drums and nothing else: Therein lays the muscle that is MOS GENERATOR. Their myopic zeal is an entry of conjecture. Vocalist/guitarist Tony Reed executed the lion's share of the production here and it's a good thing he has good ears after years of big sound foisted unto his equilibrium regularly in dives across the universe. Backing his talents up (competing is more like it) are bassist Scooter Haslip and drummer Shawn Johnson. No matter how much guitar splooge Reed piles on there is always plenty of room for Scooter's scud-missile missives of the low-end wiles. I do believe that the distinct tone he attains with his fingers that most of us have to dick around with a pick has lots to do with his left-handed upside down strings setup of the instrument. He sounds massive even through these five dollar "dollar-store" headphones. Shawn Johnson is possibly one of the most impressive skin beaters to grab hold of the sticks in this day and age. Like Bonham and Paice before him, Johnson delivers the percussive scrotal gusto in spades.

If the opening track "Lumbo Rock" does not get your gonads going then you are a Nancy to the Nth degree. Even if "Opium Skies" veers to-close-for comfort to your worn out copy of "Master Of Reality" or "Volume 4" do you really care? Need more cowbell? "Stone County Line" is just what the doctor ordered. Need some Rhodes-like electric piano? The less-aggressive "Acapulco Gold" has what you are looking for. About the only other keyboard present is a little organ getting comfy with the slushy phased guitar during the harmonious interludes of "On The Eve". Near the end of this one we get some melodic fuzzed-out Scooter bass soloing and then Reed kicks it up a notch with some optimum guitar solo moments. The live "Sleeping Your Way To The Middle" exemplifies a group onstage that is able to think on it's feet with some killer spontaneous improv.

The subsequent songs are all killer and no filler. The music herein holds up well and the cover art characterizes it to a T. I'm not sure why the cover art is not credited, but it's kind of hard to believe that someone besides Mark Dancy, one of the best comic artists of our time (his Detroit based "Motorbooty" was the best fanzine of the late 80's and all of the 90's bar none) did the artwork. Some may see MOS GENERATOR as the long haired bearded bad boys of blunt rolling rock (like ZZ TOP their drummer has no beard). Others view this three-piece as the unheralded kings of old-school classic cataclysm. It matters nil as long as the rock does not stop and the bar is always open. Good times indeed.

- Herring

OFFICIAL SITE: myspace.com/mosgenerator

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