Things get pretty tripped-out in Mos Generator’s video for the title-track to their new album and Listenable Records debut, Electric Mountain Majesty (review here), the Washington trio appearing as silhouettes — also in the case of Tony Reed as a kind of disembodied head — while an array of images play out behind from vivid space images to a finale of flying sparks. The clip, directed by Chris Mathews, Jr., gives some firm visual realization to the idea of Mos Generator‘s branching out from their straightforward heavy rock vibes on the record, taking their sound to new places. It’s an intriguing and mesmerizing video much the same way the album itself piques interest in unexpected ways.

Mos Generator played this past weekend with former Euro-tourmates Saint Vitus and have more planned in the months to come to support the album, which was released April 15.

Until then, enjoy:

Mos Generator, “Electric Mountain Majesty” official Video

Washington state hard rock heroes MOS GENERATOR released their new LP Electric Mountain Majesty on April 15 via Listenable Records. Recorded at HeavyHead Recording Company by guitarist / vocalist and renowned engineer Tony Reed, Electric Mountain Majesty is the follow-up to MOS GENERATOR’s 2012 release Nomads and a record that has been hailed as a “heavy, doom-based take on rock and roll” for fans of High on Fire, COC and Down. Today, Guitar World premieres the new MOS GENERATOR music video — for the new album’s title track — calling the cut “fuzzy, heady, psychotropic hard rock” and advising music fans to “Break out your pipe and riff-rock slippers, things are about to get weird.”

“Electric Mountain Majesty’ is an attempt to fuse our live energy and our usual controlled studio sound into something that I think is a nice forward step in the Mos Generator sound,” says Reed. “We didn’t over think the writing and recording process and we let more of our unconventional influences creep into the songwriting. In both composition and recording technique, this is the most diverse Mos Generator album to date.”

Track Listing:
1.) Beyond the Whip
2.) Nothing Left but Night
3.) Enter the Fire
4.) Spectres
5.) Neon Nightmare
6.) Breaker
7.) Early Mourning
8.) Electric Mountain Majesty
9.) Black Magic Mirror
10.) Heavy Ritual

Mos Generator on Thee Facebooks

Listenable Records

You’d probably need a week to sit down and list all the bands and projects to which Tony Dallas Reed has contributed in one form or another over the better part of the last two decades. From playing drums in death metallers Woodrot to self-recording all-instrument Pentagram covers in his “spare time,” Reed‘s substantial body of work is the result of a genuinely restless creative spirit. Over the course of the last 10 years, he’s bounced between the heavy rocking Mos Generator and more specifically ’70s-minded Stone Axe while also embarking on the side-project HeavyPink and building his own HeavyHead Studio, where he’s done not only his own recording, but tracked Saint Vitus‘ comeback album, Lillie: F-65, among others, as well as mixed and mastered outings from Wight, Trippy Wicked, Alunah and many more from the US and Europe, often between or while on tours.

Reactivated following a run focused on Stone Axe, Mos Generator released the full-length Nomads (review here) on Ripple Music in 2012, two live albums in 2013, and will shortly issue a follow-up, Electric Mountain Majesty (review here), as their first outing on Listenable Records. Reed is also recently returned to his Port Orchard, Washington, home after a trip to Australia to record Seedy Jeezus and remixed/remastered Mos Generator‘s 2007 Songs for Future Gods album for reissue through Ripple, available now. Mos Generator also has splits with Copenhagen’s Doublestone and Washington’s Teepee Creeper coming soon.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Tony Reed

How did you come to do what you do?

As a musician I started when I was 12. After years of mimicking KISS and Rush in my bedroom I figured that I should actually learn how to play. I borrowed a guitar from a guy up the street and the first song I learned was “Iron Man.” I started playing drums around the same time. I just wanted to take it all in.

As a recording engineer I guess you could say it was around the same time. I started recording everything with a boom box from the get-go. I have a recording of the first time I played drums. Over time I collected a few mics and got a three-channel Radio Shack mixer and two cassette decks and I was into overdubbing. When I was 20 I got my hands on a four-track and the rest is history.

Describe your first musical memory.

I actually think it is “Papa was a Rollin’ Stone” by The Temptations. I used to love that song. I also have recollections of the album cover for “Paranoid” being around the house and when I got that album in sixth grade I somehow already knew the songs on it, so I am assuming it was played frequently when I was a child. My mom also has a funny story of me stealing a “Nights in White Satin” 45 from K-Mart when I was two years old. She let me keep it.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

I would say that it would be 26-date Saint Vitus/Mos Generator European tour in 2013. It was a lot of hard work but we got to play for some rabid audiences and travel in style. Being on the road is all about making memories and of course later down the line you only remember the good bits.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

I believe that there is really no ending point to a musician who is driven and passionate. Growth is constant and sometimes moves faster than other times. Sometimes it would appear to move backwards and hopefully something can be learned from that too.

How do you define success?

I define success by respect. Someday I would like to be well respect as a musician and songwriter and recognized for the passion and dedication that I put into the music I make.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

My grandmother’s eyes the day before she died. I think she had moved on already because I didn’t see her in there anymore.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

I would like to create and album or song that moves people the way that certain songs move me. Sometimes I am so humbled by the songs I love that it makes me want to stop writing music because I believe I may never achieve these emotions in what I write. I also look at it as a goal and a challenge.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

Even though this is musical in its subject, it doesn’t directly affect me musically. I am looking forward to watching the musical journey my son is going on. He has the passion in his blood and it’s great to see him doing things to make music his life.

Mos Generator, “Breaker” from Electric Mountain Majesty (2014)

Mos Generator on Thee Facebooks

HeavyHead Superstore

Listenable Records

Ripple Music

To look at the grim cover art for the two full-lengths Mos Generator have released since guitarist/vocalist Tony Reed got back together with bassist Scooter Haslip and drummer Shawn Johnson, one might expect rambling, depressive miseries. Their 2012 return, Nomads (review here), on Ripple Music, boasted a cawing black crow on a gravestone silhouetted against a red sky, and though its tones are brighter in beiges and yellows, the trio’s follow-up, Electric Mountain Majesty — which also serves as their Listenable Records debut — features an Adam Burke painting that’s striking and ultimately no less mournful, cavernous skull eyes staring directly at the viewer while a totem eagle drawn on hints at some lost sense of ritual. If that’s the titular majesty that waits on top of the Electric Mountain, we’re boned, however, within the 10 tracks of the album itself one finds a much different picture being crafted by the Port Orchard, Washington, heavy rock specialists, though Electric Mountain Majesty is a bleaker album thematically and in its execution than was Nomads. Well comfortable in his role as auteur, Reed once again engineered, mixed and mastered the album himself, but in so doing seems to have pushed the sense of physical space in the recording much further than the last time out, giving tracks like the bass-heavy “Enter the Fire,” richly grooved “Neon Nightmare” and even the speedier title-track an open-air feel. It’s a bigger sound, but it suits the songs well, and as ever for Mos Generator, it’s the songs themselves that come across as the primary concern.

Whether in Mos Generator, Stone Axe, HeavyPink or any number of the other bands and projects he’s had along the way, Reed‘s genius has always rested in the crafting of memorable, structured songs, and no, I don’t think “genius” is too strong a word. He’s a natural and practiced songwriter, and over Electric Mountain Majesty‘s press-it-to-vinyl 43 minutes, there resound in songs like “Black Magic Mirror,” “Nothing Left but Night” and opener “Beyond the Whip” the kinds of choruses one anticipates from an artist of such accomplishment. The chief distinction is in the character of these songs. In “Nothing Left but Night,” which is the second cut behind “Beyond the Whip,” Reed intones, “You may find me on the edge of the light/But deep inside me there’s nothing left but darkest night.” This after one of the album’s several already-impressive solo sections. It’s a long way from Nomads‘ “I’m a traveler in a cosmic ark,” and more along the lines of some of the sorrowful lyrical ground Stone Axe covered in its heavy ’70s style, leaving an underlying moodier side to what still remain upbeat heavy rock numbers. Maybe Electric Mountain Majesty was to be Mos Generator‘s doom album, and if so, fair enough in their pushing stylistic bounds, but musically, “Beyond the Whip” still shuffles, and “Breaker” and “Electric Mountain Majesty” have a motoring rush, all the more so the latter, that works in contrast to lines like, “You can believe what you want to believe/But we all die in the end/Don’t waste your time trying to save my life/I’m dying now the way I want to,” from “Breaker.” Taken as a whole, it’s hard to decide where the real heaviness on Electric Mountain Majesty lies, in the music or the lyrics.

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Talk to Tony Reed for about 30 seconds and you’re going to know he’s a pretty self sufficient guy, so it’s not much of a surprise he’d start selling his own wares sooner or later. The guitarist/vocalist of Mos Generator, Stone Axe and HeavyPink has opened a webshop for HeavyHead, his own imprint, where he’s selling items from his bands (I still have some HeavyPink 7″s left as well), including what looks like an exclusive in the form of a Mos Generator bootleg CDR recorded in 2006.

Mos Generator also have a new live album coming recorded on their most recent European tour. Details follow courtesy of the PR wire:

Tony Reed (Mos Generator / Stone Axe / HeavyPink) Opens HeavyHead SuperStore

Renowned heavy rock musician and engineer Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Stone Axe, HeavyPink) has launched HeavyHead SuperStore, the official merch site for Mos Generator, Stone Axe, HeavyPink and other Reed-related bands.

The store offers CD, vinyl, t-shirts and other assorted items from Reed’s many projects, many of which can only be found at HeavyHead. Items exclusive to HeavyHead SuperStore include rare live recordings from the vaults of Mos Generator and more. To check out the selection, visit heavyheadsuperstore.storenvy.com.

In other news, Mos Generator will be releasing a live album recorded in Germany on the band’s last European tour. The album is expected to see the light of day later this summer through Holland’s Lay Bare Recordings. More details to come.

heavyheadsuperstore.storenvy.com
www.facebook.com/MosGenerator
www.facebook.com/pages/STONE-AXE/186663969482

Tony Reed, “Forever My Queen” (Pentagram Cover)

Next time I’m sitting around being bored, feeling like there’s nothing to do but park my ass somewhere and wait for a baseball game to start, someone please remind me there are people out there like Tony Reed who manage to use downtime for the purposes of kicking ass instead of being a whiny jerk. Kudos to the Mos Generator/Stone Axe multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and producer for giving us all a lesson in DIY ethics with his take on the Pentagram classic “Forever My Queen,” which he recorded — as he intimates in the video info — more or less just for the hell of it:

I had a couple of hours to kill one day so i recorded this Pentagram song. I filmed as i did the takes so these are the actual takes from the song.

Blamo. I will not tell you some of the BS lines I’ve drawn on to-do lists just to be able to cross them out and tell myself I had a productive day, but suffice it to say, none of them have ever resulted in a cover as solid and professional sounding as this one, let alone a pro-quality edited video of me recording said cover, cut together perfectly with the finished audio. Were I wearing a hat, rest assured, it would be duly doffed.

Enjoy Tony Reed‘s “Forever My Queen,” and then go check out his bands and buy his albums, because they rule and because he obviously deserves the money more than the rest of us. Well done, Mr. Reed.

Tony Reed, “Forever My Queen” (Pentagram cover)

Mos Generator on Thee Facebooks

Stone Axe on Thee Facebooks

Contrary to what you might presume from the photo above, Port Orchard, Washington, heavy rockers Mos Generator have seen the light. They decided to make a video about it.

The first thing you’ll probably notice in listening to “Lonely One Kenobi” from Mos Generator‘s new album, Nomads (review coming soon), is that it is crazily, unabashedly, apologetically catchy. The power trio of guitarist/vocalist Tony Reed, bassist Scooter Haslip and drummer Shawn Johnson have outdone themselves with the album, which is due out Oct. 23 on Ripple Music, and I can only assume that the yellow light in which the video finds them bathing as they perform the track is powered by the chorus.

Speaking of the chorus, the title of the song is also going to make a lot more sense once you hear it.

Please enjoy “Lonely One Kenobi” from Nomads, followed by some PR wire-type info from Ripple:

MOS GENERATOR Premiere “Lonely One Kenobi” Video

“Lonely One was the first song we wrote in the batch of new songs we recorded for Nomads. From the first time we played it live I could tell it was a strong number,” said Tony Reed when asked about the choice of lead singles, “And as for the video, yeah, I’m happy with the way Lonely One came out with what we had to work with. We’ve had a very positive response from people who have already seen the video.”

Nomads will be available world-wide on October 23^rd, 2012 through Ripple Music. The nine track album features the heaviness and elegant melody that have become the trademark sounds of the band, but this time lyrically exploring the more introspective paths of soul salvation. The Port Orchard, Washington rock n’ roll nomads spent almost a year tracking, recording, and mixing the new album until they were happy with the end result, constantly holding the material to the light, never wanting to release anything less than stellar.

Nomads will be available through Nail/Allegro Distribution in the U.S., Code 7 in the UK, and Clearspot International through continental Europe. Look for MOS GENERATOR on the road throughout the Pacific Northwest starting in September with possible more road work in 2013.

Track List:
1. Cosmic Ark
2. Lonely One Kenobi
3. Torches
4. Step Up
5. Solar Angels
6. For Your Blood
7. Can’t Get Where I Belong
8. Nomads/This Is The Gift Of Nature

Mos Generator on Thee Facebooks

Ripple Music

As the kids would say, I am “all jazzed up” (the kids say that, right?) at the prospect of a new Mos Generator album. Nomads is due out Oct. 23 on Ripple Music, and the first batch out tour dates to support the record have been announced. Sure, they’re all on the other side of the country, but it’s still pretty cool.

Click the poster to enlarge and revel in the informative nature of what follows:

MOS GENERATOR Announce Live Dates in Support of Nomads, Support Slot with Saint Vitus

Hitting the road for select dates throughout the Pacific Northwest, MOS GENERATOR are proud to announce upcoming live dates starting this September, cuminating with an opening slot for St. Vitus as the legendary Doom merchants ply their trade across the U.S. For the Port Orchard trio, getting back on the live circuit to support their latest Ripple Music release, Nomads, is where they feel the music will take on a life of it’s own.

“Mos Generator has always embraced the live setting and where we feel our chemistry really comes together,” states guitarist/singer Tony Reed , “The songs take on a different form from night to night, one of us will throw out a new twist and the other two will pick up on it and take it where it feels best to go. It’s also very organic and a great outlet for us to fulfill musical needs we don’t get from the recording process.”

It’s been five years since the world has heard new material from MOS GENERATOR, and fortunately, that streak is about to end! Nomads will be available world-wide on October 23^rd, 2012 through Ripple Music. The nine track album features the heaviness and elegant melody that have become the trademark sounds of the band, but this time lyrically exploring the more introspective paths of soul salvation. The Port Orchard, Washington rock n’ roll nomads spent almost a year tracking, recording, and mixing the new album until they were happy with the end result, constantly holding the material to the light, never wanting to release anything less than stellar.

Nomads will be available through Nail/Allegro Distribution in the U.S., Code 7 in the UK, and Clearspot International through continental Europe. Look for MOS GENERATOR on the road throughout the Pacific Northwest starting in September with possible more road work in 2013.

Track List:
1. Cosmic Ark
2. Lonely One Kenobi
3. Torches
4. Step Up
5. Solar Angels
6. For Your Blood
7. Can’t Get Where I Belong
8. Nomads/This Is The Gift Of Nature

Join the MOS GENERATOR mailing list for special fan club opportunities in the near future!

Like seemingly everything else in which he involves himself, my friendship with Tony Reed has been remarkably straightforward. The guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, recording engineer and driving force behind Mos Generator, Stone Axe and HeavyPink (whose 7” is still available on The Maple Forum, hint hint) got an email from me when Stone Axe was putting out their second album requesting a copy for review, he said sure, and I reviewed it. Then we did an interview, I wound up writing the bios for the Ripple Music reissues of the first two Stone Axe records, then HeavyPink came along and I wound up helping to put that out, and there have been live reviews along the way and more posts than I can even think of at this point. In my head, I always go back to Reed calling me at one in the morning to talk about how excited he was to have just recorded Saint Vitus’ first album in 17 years, Lillie: F-65. The dude bleeds passion for rock and roll. It’s pretty much his thing, and in all my many dealings with him, he’s never been anything but upfront, honest and as bullshit-free as his music. Aside from his astounding level of output – two of the four albums reviewed this week – three if you count this deluxe remix of Mos Generator’s self-titled that I promise I’m going to start talking about sooner than later – involved his production (those being Mighty High and Trippy Wicked) – he’s got an incredible knowledge of rock and roll and has turned me on to a few killer bands and records. To put it mildly, he’s someone whose work I respect deeply, and someone I’m very, very glad to have emailed — and not just because a few weeks ago a full glorious 12” vinyl package showed up of Mos Generator’s Mos Generator 2002 debut full-length, given the complete “deluxe edition” treatment by Ripple Music, with whom Reed has cooperated closely over the last couple years, both on his own projects and the label’s.

To say they give the record its due is probably to understate it. That’s not to disrespect the album – it’s a more than solid enough collection, and the last Mos to be issued on vinyl – so it’s well worthy, it’s just the sheer volume of this release is breathtaking. With the Ripple LP, you get the original album, Mos Generator, on vinyl and CD. That’s standard. The CD comes as part of the package. Also included on the CD is the previously unreleased track “Hearts and Hands” and a live show recorded at the Manette Saloon in Bremerton, Washington, on Aug. 24, 2002, which is enough in itself to push the 75-minute mark. That’s probably more than a lot of deluxe reissues would give you, but the vinyl package also comes with a download card – it works, I’ve tested it – that includes an entire collection’s worth of songs. It’s got everything from the vinyl and the CD, plus another complete 2002 live show, this one taped at The Hole in Reed’s native Port Orchard, WA, earlier in the year, as well as four demo tracks, and to cap off, a massive 29-minute freeform rehearsal jam from the original Mos lineup of Reed, bassist Scooter Haslip and drummer Shawn Johnson that, among other things, includes a stopover from the riff to Led Zeppelin’s “Moby Dick” toward the end. All told, it’s nearly two and a half hours of Mos Generator material covering the self-titled era, and a package that fans of the band, of Reed’s work in his other projects, or of heavy rock who might have missed them the first time around will revel in. Mos Generator released their last album – to date; they’re apparently working on a new one – in 2008, and if this reissue is to mark a resurgence, they’re certainly getting off on the right foot. I mean, seriously. The full download has 29 tracks. For some bands, that’s a discography.

The star of the show, though, is the album itself. According to the liner notes penned by Reed, the band was borrowing ideas from their Washington compatriots in Golden Pig Electric Blues Band (whose second album Reed recorded) for some of these songs, but if the seven cuts that make up the record-proper show anything, it’s that the strong sense of structure pervasive in Reed’s work now is nothing new. Immediately with “Lumbo Rock” as the opener, Mos Generator offers rock traditionalism based around memorable choruses that don’t hook for the sake of hooking, but still maintain a firm sense of presence. The band is loose on purpose, but the sound of the reissue is crisp, highlighting the warmth of Haslip’s bass and pop and sway in Johnson’s drumming along with Reed’s swaggering vocal and upbeat riffs. With a tale of moonshining and handclap-worthy snare hits for breaks between its verse lines, “Stone County Line” proves an early highlight, and “Acapulco Gold” aligns Mos Generator to stoner rock with blatant herbal homage not often paid a decade later. Reed croons over a softer guitar line, “Acapulco gold, you’re the only thing I wanna do/You take my soul and I don’t stand a chance of quitting you,” and it’s hard to imagine he didn’t have Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf” in mind as a blueprint of the song’s red-eyed ethic. The song barely reaches three minutes, but in that time has enough character in its build to leave an impression by the end and make way for the even shorter and still strikingly efficient “F-1,” the newly-done mix of which highlights Haslip’s wah bass as its core and rounds out side A with a crisp execution that continues as the second half of the album takes hold in the form of “Sleeping You Way to the Middle.”

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