The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
Spaceship Zero S/T
review at http://www.musicemissions.com/rock/
This is an album that is to accompany a German cult TV show from the late ’70′s that is to be released as a movie, but, as it turns out it is one of those movies that may not see the light of day. Vancouver’s own Darkest of the Hillside Thickets (herein referred to as DOTHT) were up to the challenge and have created quite a neat little record. In their time DOTHT have resorted to wearing graphic costumes not unlike that of GWAR. The band isn’t near as heavy but they sure can paint an image. The story of Spaceship Zero is that of getting lost in outer space and having to find their way home. This is all caused by the ship’s “Better-Than-Light Drive” that takes them to the furthest reaches of the universe. It’s all about the music anyway and man, are DOTHT creative. They even manage to pull off a song about an algebra equation. Even without the movie premise this holds up as a quality record with some very catchy tracks.
(Divine Industries 2000)

The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets: Spaceship Zero
By Limeygit (Indie Monkey) limeygit@indiemonkey.com

Where do I start? An album that is essentially the soundtrack to an indie movie that may or may not ever be released. A movie that is based on an obscure and surreal German TV show of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. A TV show, which was based upon a ‘50s US show called ‘Spaceship to the Stars’, which itself was based on a 20’s radio broadcast of the same name. My head hurts.

All I know for sure is that after a bad few weeks in terms of the quality of CDs I have received, I have finally got something interesting to sink my teeth into. Because believe me this CD may not be the greatest thing ever released, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it is definitely very, very interesting.

Back when I was a ‘whippersnapper’ there came a time when I needed some new wallpaper. Accompanied to the local large wallpaper-selling-type-store I decided I wanted the Flash Gordon wallpaper that had been released to coincide with the recent movie. As part of the special promotion if you were to purchase 5 rolls you would receive a free copy of the film’s soundtrack. Now my room only needed 4 rolls, but there was no way I was passing such an option up.

What does this have to do with anything? Well quite simply if you have ever heard the Flash Gordon soundtrack courtesy of Queen, you know what a masterpiece of camp it is. Seriously it should be an album you would be embarrassed to even share a city with, but it is so over the top in its intent and songs, you have to give it at least grudging admiration. ‘Spaceship Zero’ is quite simply an album in that tradition, very different musically, and not quite so camp, but definitely at least a distant relative.
The music is interesting alternative rock, with occasional straying into either pop or metal as the need arises. The lyrics are bizarre sci-fi stories, based upon episodes of the cult TV show. The singer, Toren McBoren MacBin, is exceptional, running through a whole range of vocal trickery. Even when he is delivering lyrics such as “Obed was a sailor, he sailed the seven seas. He made love to the fish, he made love to the fishies” or “Did you kill all the dinosaurs? Man, it wasn’t no meteors. Well I’m sick of your Uberworld. And you scream like a little girl” he does so as if it were the most serious of songs.

They even manage to craft a very fine little song out of a mathematical equation in ‘The Math Song’. Yes, the lyrics are along the lines of ‘Y=(X/5)…’, although they introduce a rhyme by deciding that ‘negative nine is so fine’. Sci-Fi and Math, we could very well be seeing the resurgence of ‘Geek Rock’ from the dark wastes of Canada.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of ‘Spaceship Zero’ is the quality of the production, really topnotch. Clean, pure and expansive. It helped a band with a big idea for an album to actually produce such a beast. After all this should have been a ridiculous laughable product, rather than an album I find myself drawn to with scary regularity.

If you are a fan of interesting, quirky music, then check this out. If you are a fan of Dungeon & Dragons, comics, sci-fi, cult movies and Lovecraft, then check this out. If you want an album to amuse you with its cleverness, whilst still essentially being a ridiculous product, then check this out. If you really think from this description that you would hate this album (I know I would), then still check it out. As I said a very, very interesting product.

Darkest of the Hillside Thickets Spaceship Zero (Soundtrack) = 7 . 5
By W. Andrew Powell (THE GATE Music Reviews)

Somewhere in the deep reaches of space there’s a ship with a “Better-Than-Light Drive” and a crew of anxious humans. They’ve made a terrible mistake and now they may have to battle a galaxy of frog-like creatures to find a way back to their real home. This is the background for Spaceship Zero, a motion picture with a very gritty, alternative soundtrack by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets.

The disc is very edgy and intense with a main theme that is slightly spacey, with some excellent rock-riffage and along the disc you get a great sense of what this movie must be all about. There’s also a little multi-media experience on the disc that is actually pretty cool and has some great effects.

Outside of the packaging though, the tracks are pretty damn cool. “20 Minutes of Oxygen” has the real essence of a story behind it, and the beat is steady with a classic rock feel that’s gotten tangled in with some modern mixing. By far it’s my favorite track on Spaceship Zero, but only because it tells the best story.

Following the first few tracks, the rest of the album goes downwards into a jumble of sci-fi influenced rock that while interesting is a little far out. This is both the strength and problem behind Spaceship Zero as some of the songs are catchy but hard to get behind when the lyrics are so strange, like “x by the tangent of n, n minus pi over 10…” on the oddly impressive “The Math Song.”

Looking at everything here you’ve got rock with alternative, and ambient pop with heavy, german metal. It all blends over the course of the disc to make a good image of what the movie must be like, but at times it is a little odd to sit through. For any sci-fi fans who love rock music though, this is one of the better indie releases I have heard in a long time, it just could have used a little tweaking. Then again, for a band that got on the road with Gwar, what can we expect?

Spaceship Zero
I went down to Divine Industries and picked up a copy of…Space Ship Zero. The album contains 15 tracks of hard edge Thicket’s songs, samples of sci-fi voice tracks, the theme song for Spaceship Zero and other surprises. The album definitely shows the well rounded growth of the band in terms of songwriting and diversity. Although they seem to be branching away from Lovecraftian lyrics, nonetheless, the band’s dedication to the genre remains intact. The mere fact that this album is billing itself as a soundtrack to a film that, as far as I know, has never been made, is an example of the original surprises on this album. Will we ever see SpaceshipZero on the big screen or any screen? I couldn’t find out. But I sure as hell hope so, if it’s half as good as the soundtrack.

THE DARKEST OF THE HILLSIDE THICKETS
Great Old Ones (Divine)
Originally released in 1996 as a conglomerated follow-up to ’95′s CTHULHU STRIKES BACK, GREAT OLD ONES has at long last been resurrected by Divine Industries. Although it’s obvious the quirky fivesome don’t exist to churn out new material – perhaps cultivating mankind for harvest and unholy consumption is more time-consuming than one would think – it was an extremely welcome surprise to receive “new” old (and great) orchestrations from a band I had assumed no longer existed. I guess I stand something to learn from the eternal patience of Cthulu & Co. – action will only be taken when the appointed time arrives. Takes time to hone one’s lovecraft, I suppose.

The material here – 22 tracks total – ranges between 1992-96, but flows very well and is not a hodge-podge of varying sound and skill qualities as many of these affairs are. Consistency – another attribute of HeWhoCannotBeNamed and his tentacled minions. So much to be learned. As with [CTHULHU] STRIKES BACK, everything here is quality goods, catchy as all hell and, by the second spin and before you can utter “Shub-Niggurath”, you’ll catch yourself ohm-ing along like a medulla-drained ninny. Although “One Gilled Girl”, “Colour Me Green”, “Big Robot Dinosaur”, “Six-Gun Gorgon Dynamo” and “Jimmy The Squid” all have a distant jingle of the The Dead Milkmen, but a much more ethereal weirdrom provided by Toren Atkinson’s otherwordly warble. Two versions of “Diggin’ Up The World”, live executions of CSB’s “Hookworm” and “Burrow Your Way To My Heart” and a mutation of Sting’s “Walking On The Moon” round out this infernal invocation and leave no room for excuses or nambypambying – get off your fat Azathoth and track this Dagon-ed thing down.

Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
Great Old Ones
Independent
Reviewed by Shawn Mason
Sheaf, the Saskatoon University Newspaper.

Everybody needs a coaster. Perhaps that’s the only reason this disc didn’t make into the trash like the case and liner notes before it. I gave it a chance. I mean, you can only hear a bunch of twenty-something D&D rejects whine over the coming of such-and-such evil monster for so long until they, and it, make it to the dumpster. Something happened though, that I can’t quite explain. I actually started to dig a couple of the tunes.

Great Old Ones is about 8-10 pretty good songs on a 22 song disc. Part of the reason for my initial dislike of the album was the fact that most of the music defies easy categorization (hard rock?). If The Smalls were stripped of all things punk and heavy metal, they wouldn’t be a very good band, and they would sound like Darkest of the Hillside Thickets.

Criticism number one comes by way of the singer’s voice. Imagine, if you will, Steven Page (Barenaked Ladies) using four Led Zeppelin albums worth of vocal effects, for every song. Also, every song on this album is a watered down H.P. Lovecraft tale or some drug induced D&D fantasy.

I like Great Old Ones because (besides the vocals) all the musicians are very talented and write really catchy songs. Before I knew it, I was singing along to tunes such as “Space Ghosts,” “One Gilled Girl” and “Digging Up the World.” I don’t want to like this album, but I do.