Mother’s Cake is a 3 piece progressive hard rock band from Austria. They released their debut album, Creation’s Finest, in 2012 to widespread critical acclaim and praise. The album garnered them a large, continuously growing fanbase that the band has maintained to the present day. They have continued playing gigs around Europe and opening for larger acts in England like Anathema and California Breed.
A live performance can never be completely captured in a studio recording, however, Mother’s Cake is extremely close to achieving this throughout the entirety of Creation’s Finest. These are musicians that play their instruments with incredible feel and a holistic understanding of the song at hand, allowing them to improvise beautifully. I believe what defines this album most is the cohesive, symbiotic relationship between the bass and drums. The two players create a tight pocket of hard-hitting groove throughout every moment. Abilities like these result in a darn close emulation of the energy and emotion that can only come with a live performance.
The ability to blend such progressive and funk-style elements into coherent, well-constructed pieces is one of Mother’s Cake’s finest assets. Each song has separate and distinct passages that flow together seamlessly. The mark of a great band is one that not only plays their music with authenticity and feel as Mother’s Cake does, but one that can craft truly fluid transitions. This applies even more to a progressive band that might have 4-5 different sections within the same song.
The consistently high quality of this album I feel only drops off after “Nobody”. Over the course of 56 minutes, Creation’s Finest does eventually begin to lack in its ability to innovate on its own sound. However, I don’t feel that this ultimately takes much away from the overall quality of the album. Nothing about the final five tracks is necessarily distracting or grating but I do feel that all the highlights live in the first seven tracks.
Creation’s Finest is an underrated album that is chock full of interesting, creative, and most importantly, well-executed ideas. The production is clear, coherent, and gives each song the dynamic range it deserves while highlighting each member’s incredible instrumental ability. Despite such a wide range of influences, the band has managed to weave them interchangeably into a unique, identifiable sound. This is something a lot of bands struggle with but Mother’s Cake accomplishes seamlessly. This is a fantastic album and is one of my top recommendations for anyone who is already a lover of progressive rock or funk styles of music.
