Album Review: Slomosa, Live in Bergen
It is too soon for anything Slomosa do to be legendary, even amid the rigors of promospeak and the necessary hype by which today’s music industry (sort of) survives. What the Bergen, Norway, four-piece are doing now is writing that legend so that someday it can hopefully be recounted in story, song and influence. The band’s Record Store Day release, Live in Bergen, captures a Dec. 2024 hometown show that, for the band, was clearly a special moment. Their second album, Tundra Rock (review here), had just come out in September on a bigger label (MNRK Heavy), and they had made a successful first foray into touring the United States, opening for Alkaline Trio on a quick release tour (review here), building on the success that the catchy hooks laid out across their 2020 self-titled debut (review here), which was warm enough in tone to be desert rock until the band boldly laid claim to their own microgenre. They’ve since headlined a US tour, among a slew of European runs, and continued their road-dogging ascent to the forefront of the worldwide heavy underground. Every step of the way, they’ve been greeted as liberators.
But even divorced from all hyperbole of ‘legend,’ Live in Bergen is deeply celebratory. The band’s 77-minute set at USK Verftet would’ve been among the bigger club dates they headlined — of course they were already making the festival rounds as well in Europe — and in performance, guitarist/vocalist Benjamin Berdous, guitarist Tor-Erik Bye, bassist/vocalist Marie Moe and drummer Jard Hole absolutely step up to meet the occasion. With producer Eirik Marinius Sandvik (who also mixed/mastered here) in the lineup as guitarist/keyboardist, Slomosa sound fully realized onstage, and their songs are delivered for character as much as impact, with earworm melodies like “Cabin Fever” and “In My Mind’s Desert” as part of an encompassing setlist with only one song left out from each of the band’s two-at-the-time LPs — “Dune” from Tundra Rock and “Traktor” from the self-titled; can’t have everything — resulting in a feeling across Live in Bergen that’s more like a greatest-hits than a live record made on just another tour stop.
What’s funny about that is that the ‘greatest hits’ are basically the first two records; again, just two songs missing. But Slomosa aren’t packing the set with filler when they include “MJ” or “Psykonaut,” they just have the songs across those two LPs to hold up a 15-track live release. They shift in mood throughout Live in Bergen between songs like “Estonia,” the initially-Moe-fronted “Red Thundra,” which must have that extra guitar in it to sound so full in its fuzz when the volume kicks in and Berdous comes in on vocals, and “Monomann,” which immediately follows with a kind of boogie that Hole has already made a signature of the band’s work, but there’s no real dip on Live in Bergen.
It doesn’t get tedious. It doesn’t feel indulgent in the mellower stretches of “Psykonaut” and the way the dense fuzz twists around to the immersive lead wash that caps it, or “Battling Guns,” with its hook on repeat in my head for years to come. It’s song after song after song, a powerhouse of a set, and it’s not like as they get into a nearly-seven-minute take on “Horses,” or “Kevin,” or “Scavengers,” they’re dropping the ball. It’s a front to back show, and the bottom line is that if you own one, either or both of Slomosa‘s albums to-date, even as a limited release, Live in Bergen makes itself feel like a necessary complement.
I’m not sure there’s another band whose ascent this decade — specifically this decade; not starting in the 2010s — has felt so fated. And they have marketing behind them now, but that feeling was there before they started headlining as well, and coming off Tundra Rock, there are few bands for whose next record I have such high expectations, set by the first two albums and this release as well, and the lessons they’ll have learned on the road over the last four or so years. The question of what they’ll do next looms large, but the level of craft they’ve shown to this point gives little reason to think they’re not the real deal, a generational band. Think of what The Sword were for Millennials. And like that band, Slomosa have set forth with a broadly recognizable sound — the self-titled Queens of the Stone Age LP is a defining influence of their work to this point — and set themselves to the task of manifesting their individuality through what they bring to it.
As to that, it’s perhaps this intangible aspect — you could call it talent, chemistry, songwriting and fleeting youth rolled together; all are factors — that most comes through in Live in Bergen. It’s not every day a seemingly tossoff 2LP live record feels like a document for posterity, but this one does. And given the implied upward trajectory of Slomosa, it’s easy to think of looking back in 10, 20 years to Slomosa‘s younger days — maybe their halcyon days? — and to continue to feel the vitality in this material played on this night in this place. Not knowing what they might do in the interim makes that speculative, but that’s been part of Slomosa‘s appeal to this point as well — their potential. ‘Who knows what triumphs a third album might bring? Hooks that could save the world.’ And so on.
The thing is, if you’ve seen Slomosa, you know that feeling is real. The converts already know. They’re a special band, born of the heavy underground and clearly aiming for broader reach, and that Live in Bergen carries that across so fluidly to the listener only reaffirms the supposition in the first place. Pro-shop, and not the least for Sandvik‘s contributions in mixing keeping Live in Bergen consistent with the band’s studio releases. I know, I know. Special vinyl. Limited releases. No repress! It’s exhausting in this day and age. Slomosa, however, sound like they’re having the time of their lives, and maybe they are, and if you’d like to share in that for a bit, Live in Bergen awaits with fuzz and welcome in kind.
