Thundermother - 'Black and Gold'

Søren Andersen returns to production duties, including mixing and mastering. He’s turned in a beautifully crafted album. While the album is sonically large and powerful, he has kept the sound bright and crisp. Vocals are clear and each instrument finds its own place in the mix. And there are a lot of instruments. In the press pack for the album founding member Filippa Nässil mentions she plays rhythm, solo and slide guitar and on top of that a talk box all on the title track. Should make quite a sight live as she juggles that load. Maybe she’ll have to get a multi-necked monster guitar like Rick Neilsen uses in Cheap Trick!

It's not just in the production department that Thundermother have upped their game. ‘Black and Gold’ continues the path of a band growing album by album. The performances of all the band members are excellent and I imagine a lot of this comes from continual playing and touring. At the forefront of the band Guernica Mancini delivers a powerful set of vocals and slips into blues mood for ‘Hot Mess.’ Filippa Nässil’s guitar playing reaches another level and she should be appearing in top guitar player list consistently on this multi-instrument performance. Emlee Johansson’s drumming on the album comes over as even more powerful than on ‘Heat Wave.’ She keeps it simple and clean and really drives the band forward, ‘I Don’t Know You’ providing a perfect example of this. Mona Lindgren being mentioned last is no reflection on her performance. Like her bandmates her bass playing has moved up several notches. She keeps the rhythm with Emlee Johansson’s drumming and her playing is fluid with some nice bass runs spread across the album.

As to ‘Black and Gold’ itself it’s an album of songs tailor made for playing live. Ten rockers, a blues shuffle, and a power ballad to wrap the whole thing up in a bow. ‘The Light in the Sky’ kicks proceedings off with a drum pattern not dissimilar to Bon Jovi’s ‘Lay Your Hands on Me’ before kicking into a full-throated stadium rocker complete with plenty of ‘woooaahs’ to get the fans joining in.

The title track follows and there’s no let up here. ‘Black and Gold’ is the first of two songs that tell of following your dreams and finding like people to make them come true. It’s a full blast of classic rock riffing, fist pumping vocals and a driving beat. It’s a terrific track and might be set to challenge ‘Back in 76’ as my favourite Thundermother song.

‘Raise Your Hands’ follows, which isn’t a Bon Jovi cover but calls out to all the dreamers to cut loose and chase those dreams.

The previously mentioned ‘Hot Mess’ follows and it’s a change of pace. Things slow down here a little. The verses roll in with a blues shuffle before hitting a chorus that mid 80s Heart would have been proud of.

From here the band rock out until the final track. ‘Watch Out’ and ‘I Don’t Know You’ both have a feel of Mötley Crüe in their prime, though dare I say the singing here is much better!

There’s a sense of AC/DC to the tracks ‘I Don’t Know You’ and ‘Loud and Free.’ Emlee Johansson nails that big flowing drum sound that backs so many AC/DC songs. But it’s just a hint of influence and the band plough their own furrow and sound like no one other than Thundermother.

The set is closed out with ‘Borrowed Time’. This is a gorgeous power ballad telling what happens when the final song is played, and the hall lights come back on. It cleverly tells of the insecurities that sit under the surface of bands, how they dream of ‘wanting to live forever’ but knowing that it’s much more likely that it’s all just ‘borrowed time.’

‘Borrowed Time’ wraps the album up perfectly. It’s a big album for Thundermother, far and away their best one to date. They’ve come an awful long way since 2014s ‘Rock ‘n Roll Disaster,’ but they are savvy enough to know and convey in the final lyrics that they can’t sit still. They need to move up the festival orders and out of bars and small clubs to keep growing and those insecurities and worries are what come through in the last track.

I don’t think that they need to worry. ‘Black and Gold’ delivers everything you’d want. There’s a track on the album called ‘Stratosphere,’ a perfect song title as it’s time for Thundermother to go ‘stratospheric.’