The Mountain-Gorillaz Album Review:

Gorillaz is back with their ninth album “Mountain” their first in three years (Cracker Island). The men behind the group Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett said this would be a “very different” and boy they were right. They both experienced the loss of close family members prior to their time in India and both described the album as a cohesive and conceptual work exploring ideas of death and the afterlife through the band's fictional characters. Hewlett said people listening to the album are "supposed to listen to it from beginning to end", saying that they were "trying to bring back that idea of taking time to invest in something, instead of this culture of scrolling". The album's name was inspired by the duo's first visit to Amber Fort in Jaipur, as well as a mountain they visited in western China during the production of the opera Monkey: Journey to the West. The Mountain debuted at number seven on the US Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 53,000 equivalent album units, which includes 38,000 in pure album sales and 15,000 streaming units. It became the group's sixth top-ten record in the United States. There is even a short film for this album as well.

What makes this group successful is how they blend so many different genres together and blend so many collaborations together to one coherent song or album. This album has at least twenty five featured artists either alive or dead. This album feels like they had their “George Harrison” moment of embracing Indian music and culture to be put into their music. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t work.

The opening track-the name of the album, “The Mountain” is an almost five-minute instrumental of Indian music. The same goes for “The Manifesto” it sounds like multiple songs in one since its seven minutes of Indian music or reggaton as both of these tracks are just too long with nothing in return. The second track “Moon cave” is almost like the first track with instrumentals with little vocals; it does sound like music for a movie so it is slightly better with some catchy lyrics but some not.

 One of the best songs is “Happy Dictator” as it has a catchy upbeat sound to it but more importantly it sounds like their sound. The other one is “Orange Country” as it is a good song with their usual sound plus it’s catchy but the lyrics seem like they go to another track.

There are a lot of reflective and emotional tracks on this album like “The Hardest Thing”, “The Empty Dream Machine”, “Casablanca”, “The Sweet Prince” and the final track “The Sad G-d”. The main issue is all of them have something off about each of them like talking instead of singing, some eeriness to it but most importantly all have some sort of Indian vibe to it/are too long. Tracks like the “G-d of Lying”, “Shadowy Light” and “Plastic Guru” they have some catchiness to them but still get ruined by the Indian music vibes but one of them kind of mixes well together. While “Damascus” sounds like they are in an Indian night club using Indian words and “Delirium” sounds like a choir is singing behind him eerily.
            I am in the minority from other places in that they are praising them for this bold mix of Indian culture with their grieving/death/afterlife themes. This was a miss and that is ok when you have made nine albums, not every album has to be a hit. But please next time maybe just not go up the mountain and keep going the path you have been on before which is blending multiple genres and many collaborators into one coherent amazing sound.