The majestic, progressive rock sounds of Austrian group Mother’s Cake hit Australian shores for the first time ever on the sweatiest of Wednesday nights in Adelaide.
There were plenty of old-school rock vibes going around during support sets from Guilt Free, Indiago, and Squeaker, all of whom possessed quite different features compared to the headliners of the night.
Overall, the crowd was small, but it was very evident that each and every person was more than zealous about the trio’s beloved rock music.
Lead singer and guitarist Yves Krismer’s German/English hybrid language was hard to understand, but what one could gather was that the three-piece were still jetlagged and also “very good to be in Australia and ready to get rock”. Thankfully, the endearing lingual attempt didn’t take anything away from the intrigue of the gig.
Mother’s Cake possess a sound that is either wildly individual, or it’s a style that just hasn’t found its way into the Australian music psyche as yet. Either way, the genre was a real eye-opener for the bantam crowd. In Benedict Trenkwalder, they have the funkiest of the funkiest when it comes to bassists. The musician slapped out solo after solo with enough coolness to fill the room with steam.
The opening tune for the gig was ‘Runaway’, a long, meandering feast of rock that set the tone for the rest of the show. Their inability to interact with the crowd resulted in a somewhat introverted performance. While this is normally a bad thing, it instead gave the show a soulful ambiance, allowing the band members to be engrossed in their own task. In turn, the audience was able to connect with the band purely through the music.
As a number of their songs are considered long epics, the set list wasn’t too extensive. During the show, the Austrian group energetically smashed out their hit single ‘Soul Prison I’ along with their album title’s namesake, ‘Creation’s Finest’. “The Cake”, as the band was regularly referred to by their adoring punters, started to gain more of a stage presence by the time their final song, ‘Realitricked Me’, was played. The opening riff was enough to get everyone moving, no matter how heat-affected they may have been. Indeed, it was a great set closer with enough grunge and grime to last for days, a trait that was overshadowed by the psychedelic rock of the rest of the set.
In a musical sense, it was a great gig, but it was a shame that there weren’t more people there to enjoy it; it’s not very often that small international bands tour Australia. Hopefully the herds rush to Mother’s Cake’s remaining shows and we see them back again in the future.
