‘Living life like stagnant water, Scared of making waves, You chose this life, You chose to stay’ (Everyone Wants Something)

Hailing from Leeds, Mother Nature’s line-up features a veritable who’s who of that city’s fine hardcore lineage, including as it does members of Perspex Flesh, The Flex, Mob Rules, and Whipping Post.  As such, expectations for this latest incarnation were running high, and were peaked still further by some searing live performances.  I’m delighted to say that Loving, Joyful And Free comfortably exceeds even those high hopes.

Tautly discordant guitar, laced with an enticingly off-kilter twang, are underpinned by a rhythm section that locks into a notably burly bounce – in particular, there is an array of utterly killer bass lines that ensure a gratifying swagger to proceedings.  As the tension between the serpentine and the stomp escalates, the guttural, rhythmically barked vocals barrel into the mix and bind them into a force of utter sledgehammer velocity.

It’s fair to say that the album’s title belies an unsettling, agitated energy that manifests itself in lyrical themes that are suffused in equal measure with anxious exhaustion and an unyielding resolve to protect a sense of self amid life’s carnage.  Each of the six tracks is a banger with personal highlights being the swirling frenzy of An Infinite Sphere and the bleakly infectious closer, Everyone Wants Something.