UMUR "Cosmic Egg" is the 2nd full-length studio album by Australian hard rock act Wolfmother. The album was released through Modular Recordings (a sub-label to Universal Records) in October 2009.

Despite a couple of lineup changes since the release of the self-titled debut album in 2005, the music on "Cosmic Egg" pretty much continue down the same 70s influenced hard rock road as the music on the debut album. Bandleader/lead vocalist/guitarist Andrew Stockdale is obviously the heart of the band and as long as he is in the band they will sound like Wolfmother. The tracks are generally energetic with powerful hard rocking riffs and memorable vocal hooklines, but there are also some more mellow psychadelic influences on the album. I´d say the band are equally influenced by an acts like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin and by a band like The Beatles. The quality of the material is generally high, the sound production powerful and the musicianship excellent.

Actually it´s hard to come up with anything negative about "Cosmic Egg". Maybe sometimes they wear their influences a bit too much on their sleeve and for a hard rock act they might be a bit too polished for some people, but upon conclusion "Cosmic Egg" is instantly enjoyable to my ears and at the same time it´s a very professional product. A 4 star (80%) rating is warranted.

voila_la_scorie My friend came up to me one morning and asked me if I knew about Wolfmother. No, I did not. What? I hadn't heard about Woldmother? Apparently, until the night before, he hadn't either. So he let me listen to a few snippets of tunes on his iPod. Yup. Sounds good. Sure. Another hard rock band I should be into, eh? Uh-huh.

Then I heard the guitar riff for 'Sundial'. What the heck was that? That's effing cool. So, I ordered the delux-edition of the album, hoping for lots of Sundial riffs. What I got wasn't disappointing at all.

I gave CD 1 a spin in my car while driving and when it was done it spun a second time before CD 2 went in for a double run through. The album ended up on my MD player as well (that was before I had an iPhone) and stayed in it for two weeks before the debut album took over. What can I say? I love the music.

Only a couple of months prior I was thinking that music these days has stagnated (that was before I discovered the Prog Archives). Once there was a time when you could date a song to the year just by the sound and style. Now 2009 sounds almost like 1999. I gave up hope and spent most of my time in my 1968 to 1978 music collection. Wolfmother not only revive that sound and style of composing and playing but give it a shot to wake up the dead rock stars of the classic days of hard rock and metal.

What I particularly like about this second album is the appearance of some mother heavy riffs that would leave Tony Iommi wondering what he hadn't smoked to think of them. The riff and sound is so heavy sometimes it seems even the distortion is weighed down and sluggish, and an image of a glacier bulldozing it's way into downtown comes to mind.

But it's not all about knocking you senseless on your ass with heavy riffs. There's plenty of straight out hard rock and ease back acoustic and piano in the very best of the classic sense. For a band whose front man talks about a rock show that's just "bang, bang, bang, bang," one song after another (see their web site for the interview with Andrew Stockdale), they put a lot of effort into creativity and mood. The album is a rich menu of flavours.

One other thing I appreciate on this album is that there is less of a Jack White vocal style (though still prominent in some songs) than on their first album. At times I find myself thinking that Stockdale's vocals resemble a young Ozzy in tone but with power coming closer to (but not equivalent to) a young Robert Plant.

Overall, this album is a high four stars for me. I read somewhere that this is stoner metal but it's categorized as hard rock here on MMA. Whatever the case, if you want to hear what Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath might have sounded like doing a collaboration, then here is something that's pretty close in my opinion.