Motherland

Motherland, released by Frontiers Records on March 22, 2013, is the thirteenth studio album and the one the band rates highest itself: Ronnie Atkins called it their best record song for song. Rene Shades, who had joined for the thirtieth-anniversary show in 2011, is on bass. Thirteen songs is a lot to hold together, and it holds. "Mother of All Lies" and "Sad to See You Suffer" were both lifted as singles, each pairing a wide chorus with a heavy tread. The title track and "Wasted" push the tempo forward, while a song like "I See Ghosts" changes the breathing of the record. The momentum recovered on Pandemonium is spread across a longer album here without thinning out, which is the album's real achievement. The previous September the band had played ProgPower in Atlanta, their first show in the United States. Thirty years into a career built on Scandinavia, Germany, France and Japan, this is the record made as they finally reached somewhere new.