by Paula R. Stiles

read it on innsmouthfreepress.com

The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. (2001) Spaceship Zero: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Vancouver: Divine Industries, Inc. $8.99

Spaceship Zero is a soundtrack album for the RPG game of the same name. Put out in 2001 by a Lovecraft/Mythos rock group operating out of Chiliwack, B.C. since 1992, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, the album is a bouncy tribute to ’50s and ’60s space-opera film and television. It doesn’t take itself even remotely seriously and comes across like Buck Rogers on crack. Tracks like the mostly-instrumental title theme, “Spaceship Zero”, and “Twenty Minutes of [Oxygen]” are unabashed space opera of the kind you’d find in early Robert Heinlein. The instrumental “Oblivion” could have come straight out of Logan’s Run and sounds a bit like Vangelis. Songs like “Power Up” have a more anime/superhero flavor by way of Power Rangers, while tunes like “Frogstar” and “Requiem for a Clone Hunter” spoof Star Wars and Flash Gordon. “The Math Song” is about math because “You got a brain/and nobody really needs another love song.”

Though the song titles indicate a rather less Lovecraft-influenced album than many of the group’s other 15 cassettes and CDs (like Cthulhu Strikes Back from 1995, or their latest, The Shadow Out of Tim from 2007), Spaceship Zero does still include tracks like the bouncy classic “The Innsmouth Look” (which has been doing the rounds on Twitter in the past week or so) and “Sounds of Tindalos”. “The Innsmouth Look” is about a guy who goes on a date-gone-bad on the beach with a girl from Innsmouth: “One glance is all it took/She gave me the Innsmouth Look.” Or it would be bad if the narrator weren’t already acquainted with “Father Dagon”. So, I guess that makes her the perfect date for him. “Sounds of Tindalos” (about the hounds of Tindalos, who can appear out of corners) appears to be from the viewpoint of creatures of the outer darkness dragging down a helpless victim to insanity, or maybe the staff of the psych hospital asking said victim what he’s seeing: “Struggle not/to be free/Tell us all/what you see.”

“The Chosen One” sounds like road music for the Winchester Brothers as they speed their way through a Mythos universe (It samples “The Innsmouth Look” at the beginning), though the album predates Supernatural by four years.

Spaceship Zero seems to exist in an odd place, genre-wise. I’ve seen it variously described as “blues” (it’s not), “rock”, “punk rock”, “horror punk”, “geek rock”, “powerpop” and “nerd rock”. You could argue for the last category, if you consider anything with lots of sound effects and scifi dialogue in it “nerd rock”, too. But this feels more like hard rock of the garage-band variety that sometimes (”The Innsmouth Look” with its pounding bass line) tips over into metal along the lines of bands like Stabbing Westward. If you like Metallica and don’t mind something somewhat quieter, this could be up your alley. If you’re into rock and Mythos, you need to check this band out.

Interested in purchasing this CD? You can listen to it here or you can buy Spaceship Zero from Amazon.com.

The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets: Spaceship Zero [Divine Industries, 2000]
Two words? Spaceman rockin’
review on tangmonkey.com by Sean

There are few things more bizarre than a British Columbian rock band recording a faux-soundtrack to a German sci-fi show from the 70s. There’s nothing to stop the bizarre from being wholly kick-ass, however, and this album proves the rule. The Thickets have made a career out of being weird: the quintet from Chilliwack B.C. have released two disc-long homages to the horror of HP Lovecraft, but with their most recent album, they’ve shifted from Cthul[h]u to cheesy space opera. A full-blown concept album, Spaceship Zero recounts a narrative of Clone Hunters and slave ships. The lyrics aren’t any more inane than typical pop-punk fare, however, and there’s far more charm to “Math Song” – whose lyrics are mostly made up of mathematical formulae – than to the latest Blink 182 single.

The Thickets rip through their tunes with noisy precision, the instruments and vocals providing a tight mix of crunchy punk stabs and pop licks. Bouncy drums back energetic guitar-lines, carrying song after song into the realm of outstanding Foo Fighters-esque rock’n'roll. Toren Atkinson’s vocals climb from a dark growl into mischievous punk sing-alongs, and he invests the absurd lyrics (replete with They Might Be Giants whimsy) with just the right degree of earnesty. The Thickets are aware of the silliness of their project – the liner notes include an illustrated short story, and the CD’s got some interactive video-game features – but they revel in it to the point that the listener feels s/he can laugh along with them. Rather than singing mopey songs for the dumped, the Thickets opt to play anthemic tunes to space calamities (“20 Minutes of Oxygen”) or rock out in incomprehensible German (“Dies ist unverschamtheit”). As a result, this potentially embarassing experiment is transformed into a fun, utterly listenable delight, and a perfect antidote to the everyday greyness of life on planet Earth. Outstanding.

The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
Spaceship Zero
reviewed by Irving Bellemead
Splendidezine.com

I don’t really know what’s going on here, but I think I like it. Apparently Spaceship Zero is the name of a very strange German TV show from the 1970s, which in turn was based on an American radio drama series from the 1950s. Those wacky Germans. Someone in Hollywood decided to make a movie of the show, but somehow it didn’t work out, which is why you’ve never heard of the movie (although you can check out what might have been at http://www.spaceshipzero.com). Before it didn’t work out, Vancouver’s favorite costume-wearing, H.P. Lovecraft-inspired punk-pop band (those wacky Canadians), The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, was asked to do the soundtrack for the film, which resulted in the creation of the CD currently under review. Okay?

There’s something very strange about this disc, and I think that it has to do with the fact that it’s quite difficult to tell if this is an elaborately conceived and executed hoax (i.e. the soundtrack to a non-existent film), or if it’s just a case of a very good match between a band and a movie. In the end it doesn’t really matter, as most of the songs on this disc are strange and interesting regardless of whether they’re really inspired by a film or not.

So what does the soundtrack to a doomed film sound like? Pretty good. Musically, things stay on the poppier side of the punk-pop equation, although there are a few goofy nods to both dopey electronica and cheeseball heavy metal. The sound and production on the disc are terrific and the playing is tight and clean. Toren Atkinson’s vocals are exceptional, and he manages to make even the goofiest of lyrics sound cool (watch out Thurston Moore!).

Speaking of which, it’s really the lyrics that make these tracks more than slick, well-recorded pop songs. That’s not to say that they’re always particularly good lyrics, but at least they’re always interesting. In fact, they’re often pretty good.

Probably my favorite track is “The Math Song”, which includes the line:

(x[tan n]) – (pi/10) = -9
and is sung in quite a lovely manner. I find myself singing along with “The Chosen One” despite undecipherable lyrics like:

Like the star in the stone Of the elder thing
Like the deal that we made With the morlock king

And who could resist a song (“The Innsmouth Look”) with sexy lines like:

I dig her batrachian lips
Her bulbous eyes and scaly hips
She’s got secrets but they’ll soon be mine

and:

Obed was a sailor,
He sailed the 7 seas
He made love to the fish, he made love to the fishies

Not me!

So…this is a pretty strange CD. On the surface it seems like a slick soundtrack to a movie you’ve never heard of. As you dig deeper, you discover that it is the slick soundtrack to a movie that you’ve never heard of, but it’s slick in all the right ways, and in addition to being slick and really good sounding, it’s also very, very odd. That can only be a good thing.

[The] Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
Spaceship Zero
Reviewed by Roman Sokal
Exclaim! magazine October 2001

Not only does this harmless group pay homage to the late ’70s hit German series, they make a sort of punk-pop-filtered homage to the songs of the ’80s. The anthems are goofy and the vocals are strenuous, and the budget ’80s guitar sound is almost so forced that the affair could actually be a gimmick in disguise. Pranksters or forever underrated geniuses? You decide.

The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
Spaceship Zero: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Reviewed by Jason Schreurs
Agree to Disagree magazine.

Only this band of merry weirdos would record a soundtrack to the late ’70s cult television show, Spaceship Zero, 25 years after the fact, complete with hilarious CD art depicting the band as characters in the show. For those in the dark about the Thickets, and surely there are many, this group began in Maple Ridge, BC in the mid-’90s and have since stupified listeners with their strange brand of H.P. Lovecraft-inspired sci-fi rock. Metal, punk and riff rock all poke their ugly little heads out in the Thickets’ sound, creating songs that definitely go over most music fans’ heads. A band for the intelligent but disturbed, this latest album is their slickest and sickest production yet.

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)