Motorpsycho set the dials to ‘rocking’ on Kingdom Of Oblivion

Cult Norwegian psych-heads Motorpsycho release their 25th album Kingdom Of Oblivion. Or maybe it's their 27th

Motorpsycho: Kingdom Of Oblivion
(Image: © Rune Grammophon)

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Thirty years into their career, Motorpsycho remain an enigma in plain sight. The fact that Kingdom Of Oblivion might be their 25th, 26th or 27th studio album depending on what measure you use, indicates how sprawling and amorphous their universe is. 

Musically it finds them playing it as straight as they’re capable of, channelling their protean sound into a comparatively direct hard-rock assault on the riff-fuelled title track and The Warning (Pts 1 And 2)

Of course, ‘direct’ is a relative concept in the world of Motorpsycho, especially on a double album that runs close to 70 minutes. 

It’s impossible not to see the lysergic tracer lines surrounding the steamrolling The United Debased, while a watery cover of Hawkwind’s The Watcher indicates where their heads are forever at. 

The cumulative result is an album accessible enough to provide an entry point for the curious, while having just the right amount of wiggy to satisfy paid-up members of the Motorpsycho cult.

Dave Everley

Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! and Classic Rock, Associate Editor on Q magazine and staff writer/tea boy on Raw, not necessarily in that order. He has written for Metal Hammer, Louder, Prog, the Observer, Select, Mojo, the Evening Standard and the totally legendary Ultrakill. He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.