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.