Band:	Mother Of All
Album:	Age Of The Solipsist
Style:	Melodic death metal
Release date:	June 11, 2021
A review by:	musclassia

01. Autumn
02. We Don't Agree
03. Curators Of Our World Scope
04. Age Of The Solipsist
05. At The Edge Of A Dream
06. Blood Still Owed
07. Feel The Pain

It can be hard to work out exactly what your musical approach is on your debut album, as Age Of The Solipsist so ably demonstrates.

Age Of The Solipsist is the debut record of Mother Of All, a one-man project helmed by Martin Haumann, known for his previous drum work with Essence and Afsky. On this album, he also takes on vocal duties, although Steve DiGiorgio and Frederik Jensen respectively contribute their bass and guitar skills as session musicians on the album. I discovered Mother Of All not through any of these channels, but by the presence of "Autumn", the opening song from Age Of The Solipsist, on a split released earlier this year with Kvaen, a one-man project that found success of its own last year with mightily impressive debut album The Funeral Pyre. Whilst "Autumn" makes a similarly promising first impression, it sets expectations that the rest of Age Of The Solipsist doesn't really live up to.

The expectations that "Autumn" sets are of a strong, if perhaps unoriginal, melodeath record, somewhere between the Finnish and Gothenburg sounds, with acoustic guitar breaks and a melancholic touch to some of the riffs contrasted with high-pitched screams and frantic stretches of blasting. I was intrigued at the prospect of hearing more music in this vein when the full album was released, but ultimately, those Finnish/Be'Lakor-style melodeath moments effectively disappear after this song, aside from one or two errant riffs. The rest of the record definitely carries over the Gothenburg side of "Autumn"'s melodeath, as well as a few other different sounds, none of which are particularly beneficial to Age Of The Solipsist.

"We Don't Agree" signals a notable departure from "Autumn" by opening with Obscura-style tech-death, which may not be a huge surprise given that Hannes Grossmann produced the record, in addition to DiGiorgio's past with the band. However, I can't say it's a hugely interesting interpretation of it, and the fusion of this sound with a more thrash/metalcore approach later on doesn't do much to further inspire me. The tech-death is carried over to "Curators Of Our World Scape"; this song also features a repeated section that is presumably indebted to Lamb Of God, but all this motif does is highlight how un-groovy much of the song is otherwise, with the verses having an offputting lack of fluidity to them.

The strange thing is that the tech-death is pretty much done with on the album after this song ends, which is what I was referring to with the opening sentence. This album is only 30 minutes long, meaning that "Autumn" takes up nearly a fifth of the record by itself, but by moving first from this style of melodeath to tech-death, then onwards to a more mainstream Gothenburg sound on later tracks, the album feels unfocused, and it doesn't have the quality in the tracks to compensate. The title track is probably the second-strongest song here, delivering some sufficiently memorable hooks with a sound not a million miles away from some Soilwork material, but without the cutting edge that elevates Soilwork above their peers. In contrast, the very generic mid-tempo sound of "Blood Still Owed" just makes me want to listen to similar-yet-better songs that manage to possess a bit more personality, whilst the melodeath/hard rock crossover of "Feel The Pain" simply doesn't work for me. These two tracks make for a flat end to an album that opens with quite a bit of promise.

Age Of The Solipsist is a very competently made debut; Haumann brought in notable names with the likes of Grossmann, DiGiorgio and cover artist Travis Smith, and the album sounds just like you would expect a melodeath album to. However, it simply lacks either the focus or songwriting strength to work convincingly. It's not like it's an eclectic record; there's enough crossover between each style used here to form a logical continuum, but they're not integrated seamlessly, with the album jumping about from one idea to another instead, and each new style is introduced without either a novel or inspired take on it. I was quite looking forward to this album after discovering "Autumn" as I'm always game for a quality melodeath record, but even though it's hardly a subgenre with great strength in depth at present, this isn't a great addition to the Gothenburg sound, lagging behind an album such as Nija from Orbit Culture. Nevertheless, Haumann clearly has the talent, and he also seems to have the connections, given the personnel involved in this record, so I'm optimistic that with time and refinement, Mother Of All could produce something closer to the level that I was hoping for.