Global Parasitic Leviathan

I've got to say that Mother Of All have confused me in their style shift between the debut album and Global Parasitic Leviathan. Essentially, Age of the Solipsist was just Martin Haumann's album, although I believe it's the same Frederik Jensen who has accompanied him on both efforts, now in a more permanent role alongside a couple of other string players. That 2021 release featured many progressive tendencies and an overall fresh approach to melodic death metal that borrowed from its past without really stealing from any specific graves. But now the full line-up has come on board, and even if the album may have been written before they joined, the approach has changed a great deal. Perhaps it's the production that makes me conclude this, but I initially thought that Mother Of All had been completely homogenized in 2024, since the first listen to Global Parasitic Leviathan just seemed flavourless to me, whereas the debut was brimming with quirks and ideas, though not all fully realized.

Certainly the progressive ideas have largely taken their leave in the new effort, while the feel of a whole band at work seems more evident than before. However, I've started to find that this second album merely wraps its ideas up a bit more tightly in conventional patterns and doesn't present them as something unusual. The rhythms make this pretty clear, often selecting tight grooves that I could imagine Overkill or Metallica using instead of your typical Gothenburg acts. Besides, the hooky riffing shown before on 'I Don't Agree' finds more outlets here, recalling positive memories for me of Hatesphere and The Haunted, though strung up with less anger and more abstraction in the lyrics. Honestly, the themes listed in the press material are shockingly deep; things like countries using debt as a weapon and Hannah Arendt books are listed. Those 2 things necessarily make the songs a bit longer and more consistent than either the previous material from Mother Of All or the unhinged energy of the bands I mentioned above, which probably led to my initial poor impression. All the same, it's true that some parts remain monotonous, such as fairly long sections of even riffing, lack of variety in pace, and Haumann's relatively uniform vocals, which are clear and crisp growls without any surplus in energy or emotion.

As such, it falls mainly to the guitars to make the record stick with the listener, and they manage this successfully at moments such as the delicately melodic conclusion to 'Hypocrisy: Weaponized' or the hummable riffing during 'Cosmic Darkness'. For the album as a whole, though, I'm still not sure they achieve enough contrast to demand attention, even if there's nothing specially wrong when taking each song blow by blow. Time changes often lack surprise value and new sections might not lead anywhere particular, for which 'Debt Crush' is a case in point when it jumps suddenly into a sprightly heavy metal riff from nowhere, only to drop quiet before doing anything with it. As a result, I can start paying attention at any point during Global Parasitic Leviathan and find something of worth to listen to, but I can also drop back to sleep for several minutes before anything demands my attention. It all slightly has the feel of a random riff collage too, meaning I regularly get lost and don't know which song I'm listening to.

Just because I'm overall disappointed with Mother Of All doesn't mean that you should despair about Global Parasitic Leviathan. The playing style has merit, partly since fairly few groups have the ability to consistently play melodic death riffs (as opposed to death riffs plus melodies), and the moments when the arrangements work best always end up being catchy to some degree. But the final product just fails to stand out, and that's the big problem. Mother Of All have literally made the most consistent set of songs ever and proven why that's a bad thing.