Review of Lobotomizer taken from the
e-zine
SATAN STOLE MY TEDDYBEAR, March 2001.
English. Found at the ssmt-site.

Lobotomizer   1990   Voices Of Wonder

Motorpsycho's debut wasn't much of an indication of things to come. This album is a fairly middle- of-the-road hardrock/grunge album, with tracks ranging from dull to fairly good. In a way this album has a lot in common with the stoner rock scene and at times sounding very much so like Spine of God-era Monster Magnet, with heavy guitars, stoned out jams, occational bouts with mad amounts of reverb and somewhat directionless songwriting.

Some of the tracks, like the straight-to-the-point hardrocker "Grinder" and the twelve minute closer "TFC", which hops between quiet verses and Sonic Youth-ish noise-excursions, hit the spot quite well. But others, like the useless "Wasted" and "Home of the Brave" trot along without much of interest happening, except possibly a fairly fun riff. The album does occationally have flashes of the band's future qualities, thanks to some very nice riffs, and experimenting with noise and violin, but it ends up in "for fans only" camp, as the band released so much better material later on. In many ways it seems like a band having lots of fun, but not really found their way yet.

As one might expect, the production on the album is pretty bad and the overall playing is fairly sloppy, but since when did that matter in this genre? The album is probably mainly of interest for people who are already fans of the band's later material, and for people who feel they have to own any and all grunge-ish album they come over. If you want something along these lines, you're probably better off getting Tad's Inhaler or Mudhoney's Superfuzz Bigmuff instead. Thankfully Motorpsycho didn't give up, but went on to bigger and better things.

Øystein Holm-Olsen