Triumphantly dark, brooding, overblown, and hazy doom. When you think of the music of The Goslings, you can imagine a crowd of people; fists in the air with eyes fixed on the ground, everyone nodding in unison to the funeral procession rhythms; hair blown back by the sheer volume, yet transfixed by the drone. The album opens with exactly that intention and it feels good. Track by track the album seems to get better, growing, moving, expanding? allowing for dynamic lows and highs and of course generating plenty of that thick, syrupy ooze of distortion that the Goslings are known for. By the opening of Motorcade, you feel as though you may be listening to a masterpiece of a record. Motorcade is just brilliant on all levels and on par with any other heavyweights from their previous albums; plenty of feedback, hammering rhythms, soaring shoegazey-vocals? But then?.

All of a sudden, the album takes a sharp turn and just completely loses focus. The last 4 songs are complete throwaways. It?s as if the band experiences a crisis struggling to break from their trademark sound and seem at a loss as to where to go next. Brohm Bramin tries to introduce off-kilter, disjointed rhythms into the sound, but that becomes a distraction and sucks away any power that the song may have. They follow that with a lo-fi bluesy solo guitar improv that is entirely uninteresting and then continue on to another lackluster and disappointing piece. The final track is an instrumental that tries unsuccessfully to bring back the tone of the beginning of the album to offer some continuity, but it?s too little too late; the damage is done. It?s too bad, because this album had all of the markings of a record that could truly transcend. It was mastered by James Plotkin with beautiful packaging and artwork by the band. If you?re fan, you?ll still probably want this anyway, at least for the first four songs. 6/10 -- Todd Brooks (8 April, 2008)