Just when we thought an album couldn't quite scare the shit out of us like Funeral Mist's Maranatha, along comes Horde Of Hel with their debut Blodskam. And while this Swedish group may not be *quite* as terrifying as Funeral Mist, they're not far behind, which is pretty much our highest seal of approval. If anything, the over the top pornographic imagery littering the liner notes is definitely on par with the ultrablasphemous art that is inseparable to Funeral Mist, and sonically there are some similarities as well. Horde Of Hel is pretty strange at times, with totally bizarre song structures and some awesome, unique riffs. There seems to be a pretty heavy industrial influence on display, with crazy electronics going all over the place, as well as some moments of experimental ambience, but they never get too weird or arty for their own good, and no one will mistake this for anything but the most vile, hate filled, and blasphemous black metal. Plus, you know you can't go wrong with a band whose MySpace page lists their members as "KILLERS, ANTI SOCIAL BEINGS, PREDATORS, DICTATORS, PSYCHO, MANIACS, ULTRA RADICAL TERRORISTS, SADISTIC ANTI HUMANS, PEOPLE OF SURT, PEOPLE OF THE BLOOD!!!!!!!!!" Yes, please!
The band perfectly understands their craft while avoiding the cliches that many black metal bands stumble on. Perhaps most significantly, instead of focusing on speed, they choose skull-crushing heaviness. The pounding drums keep things moving at a slow dirgey pace, combined with super thick, evil sounding riffs and heavily distorted vocals that alternate between guttural croaks and demonic shrieks. At times, some of the riffs recall the heavy as fuck atonality of My War era Black Flag, which is always a good thing, and which should give you an indication of the band's nihilistic m.o. There's something about black metal groups who understand the importance of lumbering, doomed out atmospheres that just can't be beaten. Each drum hit is like being hit with a sledgehammer while the rest of the band stands over your broken body, mocking you with their Satanic riffs and crazed vocals.
These guys seemed to appear from out of nowhere, which makes Blodskam even more of a welcome surprise. We're certainly looking forward to whatever this band may unleash upon the unsuspecting world next, because when you produce something this evil, there's really only one place you can go afterwards: straight to hell.
When we reviewed Blodskam part 1, the debut from this Swedish black metal horde, we sort of couldn't believe how horrifying and harrowing these guys sounded, like Funeral Mist or Deathspell Omega. Horde Of Hell were terrifying, their sound a dense gnarled tangle of black fury, complex and convoluted, a distinctly industrial vibe, but most importantly, crushingly heavy, not that brittle buzz that most BM trafficks in, this shit was pummeling, brutal, black hole heavy.
So we definitely had high hopes for part two, and right out of the gate, things are definitely primed for more terror, with an extended sprawl of creeping black ambient, muted industrial percussion, fucked up samples, monk like chanting, all wreathed in a gauzy washed out blackness, a ritualistic intro that must be setting us up for something sonically serious. And when the riffs kick in, it is pretty fierce, a chugging churning, but with a weirdly classic metal vibe, definitely more melodic than we remember, and then the vocals come in and WOAH, it's like a totally different band, not in a bad way, just in a weird what-the-fuck way, with soaring almost operatic vocals, reminding us a bit of Borknagar maybe? But wrapped around noodly lead guitars, almost power metal arrangements, cheesy synths, drum machines, and some, well, some GROOVE, which is again surprising, and to avoid being bummed out that this isn't scarier than Blodskam I, all we can do is treat this like some wholly other band, and in that case, we're sort of smitten by how fucking ridiculous and weird this is, the next track shifts gears completely, the sound quality shifts too, and the band are suddenly churning out some sort of hypno rock heaviness, with cool garbled vocals, swirling synths, all blurred into a heaving blown out churn, not all that black metal, but definitely heavy and FUCKED UP.
And so it goes, really, every once in a while we're convinced that maybe the wrong music got pressed on to the wrong disc, but in spite of ourselves we're digging it, from woozy buzzy midtempo dirgery, to absolutely bizarre new age electronic ambience, complete with super soulful lead guitars, and hazy atmospheric synths, and finally another weird sort of new age blackened atmospheric chug and flutter fest, that has us scratching out heads, and thinking this almost touches on Xynfonica / Shevalreq territory, which is high praise indeed, although perhaps not the sort of praise we expected to be heaping on Horde Of Hel.
The record finishes off with a handful of demo tracks, and those are indeed more like the HoH of old, grim and grinding furious black filth, blasting, thrashing, industrial tinged heaviness, gargles sick alien vox, dense gnarled guitars, the perfect balance for the off kilter weirdness of the first half.
Not sure what the story is, maybe part II was remix, or just the band trying something weird, all we know is that the first half pushes all our fucked up freaky black metal buttons BIG TIME, and the second half offers up more of what we loved about Blodskam part I, which makes this pretty much win win....
Even to this day, people are constantly singing the praises of Godflesh. Talking about how influential they were. And rightfully so. Cuz they were, certainly. But there was another band back then, who were just as amazing. And who sounded quite a bit like the 'Flesh. But had their own take on the whole metallic industrial plod thing. Pitchshifter were often painted in the press as Godflesh ripoffs, but as far as we're concerned, there was plenty of room for more than one pounding industrial metal outfit! And in many ways, Pitchshifter were a bit more interesting. Heavier a lot of the time, definitely more 'metallic', and with some seriously killer riffs, but they also let the drum machine take center stage sometimes, embracing their machine like rhythms, filling breaks with weird stuttering skitters and rapid fire machine gun rhythms. Don't get us wrong, we LOVE Godflesh, but we love Pitchshifter too. A lot!!!
So we were super psyched to discover that there was a new band, self described "industrial driven doom", featuring some Pitchshifter guys doing, well, industrial doom, as if they weren't already sort of doing that back in the day anyway. So here it is. Hordes Of Satan (bit of a naff name), four songs of crushing machinelike doom, and weirdly enough, it doesn't sound all that different than Pitchshifter. Slower, heavier maybe, but still immediately recognizable as the 'Shifter. Machinelike rhythms, massive downtuned guitars, growled death metal vocals (again not all that different than Pitchshifter). Crushingly heavy and intense, it sounds like Godflesh or Pitchshifter at 10 rpm, sludgy and doomy but churning and relentless. And pretty fucking scary. One of the tracks features a cool bridge with some scary sample looped and repeated over a churning drum machine and a throbbing bass line and the vibe is seriously Skinny Puppy! And as if to drive the whole Pitchshifter thing home, they even do a Pitchshifter cover, "Landfill", and guess what? It sounds like Pitchshifter, only slower and heavier. Which as far as we're concerned is fucking awesome!
All this Jesu stuff lately had us hankering for Godflesh, and thus missing Pitchshifter, so this Hordes Of Satan is quick becoming out new favorite slab of heaviness!!
While, sure, there were indeed heaps of exciting Record Store Day releases to freak out about this past weekend, but as you can tell from perusing this week's list, there are of course lots of other recently released things to get excited about as well. Like this - especially if you dig goddamn good ol' rock n' roll music. It's the new album from Swedish retro-proto-metallers Horisont, released Stateside by Rise Above licensees Metal Blade. It just came out this week, on Tuesday, and if we weren't so busy, we woulda been happy to spend Tuesday night with this cd and a six pack of an appropriate bubbly beverage as our only entertainment. As you might have already surmised from the title, this is Horisont's second album. We raved about their debut Tva Sidor Av Horisonten a few years back (the first word of our review was "Wow"), and Allan here was lucky enough to see 'em play at Roadburn in 2010 (they slayed!), so yeah we've been eagerly anticipating this new album, and it's a doozy, definitely for fans of Witchcraft, Graveyard, Burning Saviours, Gentleman's Pistols, Danava, and others who keep the spirit of '70s style heavy rockin' alive today. Meaning, also for fans of Sabbath, Judas Priest circa "Sad Wings", Uli-era Scorpions, UFO, Nazareth, Swedish gods November, Leaf Hound, and all the other (proto-)metal granddaddies that the Horisont boys are doubtless making very proud.
There's ten new, timeless sounding, tracks here, rollickin' with boogie rock action borne of both youthful exuberance and love of those classic influences. Horisont kick out the jams big time, veering from bluesy, bellbottomed lope to sheer speedy early-metal gallop, these songs replete with soaring vox and soaring melodies, lots of tasty guitar harmonies and catchy riffs. You've got your hard rockers, a few moodier, psychier moments, more hard rockers, and then wow when it seems that it can't get any better, the disc ends with a hell of a bang, Horisont creating their proggiest metallic construct yet with the stuttering, stunning "Thunderflight", a NWOBHM-ish triumph that fans of such diverse acts as La Otracina, Pharaoh Overlord and even Slough Feg will want to hear in heavy rotation. Along with the rest of the disc. Damn. We know that Swedes seemingly have access to a Rock n' Roll Way Back Machine, and Horisont have put it to good use here, again.
We just can't stop spinning this, the rockin' and rollin' new record from Sweden's wondrous Horisont, entitled Time Warriors. More like time trippers. It's another blast of their retro '70s proto-metal stylings, a la countryfolk Witchcraft, Graveyard, and Troubled Horse, but Horisont have a bit more of a "metally" sound to 'em, they're obviously big into the gallop of post-Sabbath '70s metal like early Judas Priest and Scorpions, when those bands were still sorta psychedelic though. We loved Horisont's previous two platters, and this one is hitting the spot just as much, or more!
Lotsa good riffs light things up left and right, plus the singer ain't afraid to really belt it out, letting loose with some high pitched screams as the need arises - reminding one aQ customer of the guy from Cirith Ungol! Singer and band both go at it with plenty of passion and power. You sure can tell they love what they do... and are damn good at doing it.
Most of the songs are sung in English, though a couple are in Swedish, including one called "Dodsdans" that lopes majestically in the vein of Thin Lizzy. Another one worth mentioning is epic (and aptly-titled) album-closer "All Must Come To An End, Part I & II", which gets super melodic and heartfelt, before a ripping and rollicking finale. Horisont can do emotive, and they can do ass-kicking. Yeah! In the running with Kadavar, Free Fall, and Hot Lunch for best heavy rock album of 2013 that sounds like it came out in, like, 1973. Well, this, maybe more like '76.
Wow. Or maybe not wow, 'cause we should be used to it by now. But yeah, wow. ANOTHER Swedish band that seems, magically, to be from the '70s, though they're actually quite contemporary in 2010. Like AQ faves Witchcraft, Burning Saviours, Dead Man, Elope, Dungen, Graveyard, et. al., newcomers Horisont possess the secret to sounding so '70s, that they probably think Nixon, or maybe Ford, is still the US President. At the latest (and at their most metal), it wouldn't appear that their influences extend beyond the early years of the NWOBHM. (Though that's not to say you won't flash on QOTSA or something while listening to this, but its more akin to vintage and obscure likes of, say, Highway Robbery and Vardis.) And not only do they sound '70s, but like those other Swedish bands we mentioned, they're damn good, too.
In fact, it's from the same label that brought us Dead Man that we've imported the debut cd by Horisont. We ordered it on LP too, but unfortunately they arrived damaged, hopefully we'll get more soon and be able to list the vinyl next time. And while vinyl (or 8 track?) might be the appropriately retro medium for this music, even on cd Horisont kicks out the heavy progressive blues rock in utterly killer fashion, a la early Sabbath (but with maybe more in the way of uptempo energy), Led Zeppelin, UFO, and we think we even hear a little Aerosmith. And what's even more awesome, track 4, "The Unseen", reminds us of Uli-era Scorpions too! Also of course, Horisont sound a lot like their Scandinavian '70s prog-psych uncles, November, Life and others. This IS pretty dang bluesy, and rockin', with high, wailing vox, tasty guitar licks, lumbering riffage, and a propensity for cow-bell-knockin' boogie. They make no bones about it, they even named a song "Horisont Boogie", just in case you didn't believe us. All right! Yet, we must say they boogie quite elegantly, and they also have their mystic moods too, getting mellow and melancholic on occasion, and about half-way through this ten song set, they switch from singing in English to their native language, which adds to the "progg" vibe most charmingly.
Classy, catchy, way impressive stuff, especially for a debut. We're looking forward to seeing 'em play live someday (no, we don't know if they're gonna tour in the USA any time soon, but they ARE playing at the Roadburn festival in Holland next year that Allan here has plans to attend...). We don't know how they do it, but they do. All lovers of '70s proto-metal prog heaviness, who dig hearing a new band doing it right, give it up for Sweden and HORISONT!
This is what that Dead Weather blues rock album we never got around to reviewing really shoulda sounded like, although Dead Weather, for all their supergroup status, and bonus points for covering Pentagram, aren't of course Swedish and that's not their fault we suppose.
Another pestilential black cloud of ultra raw, primitive thrash and buzz from Horn Of Dagoth. It's been 2 years since the last rehearsal disc, and while the sound is similar, the songs have gotten even better, more complex, more dense, their buzzing old school black metal sprawling and expanding to incorporate long swaths of trudging doom, blown out blasts of furious black drone, stacatto bursts of machine gun like rhythm, dizzying insectoid riffing, loping midtempo lurch... Not to say that HoD aren't still ultra raw, ultra grim, and ultra KVLT black black metal, cuz they are, and their black flame still obviously burns for bands like Mutiilation, Darkthrone, Vlad Tepes, Beherit and other practitioners of the raw black arts. But like any band worth their salt, as time goes on, the more interesting their music becomes, and even with a core sound of black buzz and chaotic thrash sure to please the die hards, and a production (it is a rehearsal after all) that renders every thing in blown out smears and blurs - a swirl of cymbals sizzling atop a roiling murky black abyss, the songs and sound are interesting enough to keep weirdo black metallers equally entranced, at least when they're in need of a good old fashioned black thrashing.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! Each disc numbered in the band's blood, and each booklet also numbered, as well as decorated with an upside down cross and the triple sixes, ALL IN HUMAN BLOOD!
It's been a while since we've heard from SF black metal horde Crebain. And of course by horde we mean one guy, Ancalagon The Black. The super limited Night Of The Stormcrow demo was gone in a flash (though the brand new SUPER LIMITED picture disc version is reviewed elsewhere this list) as was the Leviathan / Crebain split on Andee's tUMULt label. But Crebain hasn't just been laying about, lurking in caves and forests, haunting chapels and burning churches, nosiree, while he's been working on the next Crebain full length, he's also been recording with a few likeminded black hearted folks as Horn Of Dagoth. An ultra primitive, super raw blast of old school black black black metal. Murky and muddy, ultra lo-fi rehearsal recordings that sound just as good as some of the amazing 'rare' classic black metal records we've carried. And even though the lo-fi recording is not an intentional part of HoD's sound, more a result of recording limitations (it is a rehearsal after all) it ends up giving the sound a hellish subterranean sheen, and makes it sound like it actually IS some lost black thrash classic. The drums are raw and blown out and buried miles down in the mix, as are the vocals, throat shredding shrieks struggling to be heard through the thick sludgy wall of buzzing riffs and rumbling bassdrone. But that's what makes this sound so good. Heavy and fuzzy and droning and blasting and black as fuck. Essential for the black legions that bow down before Darkthrone, Mutiilation, Belketre, Vlad Tepes, old Mayhem, old Gorgoroth, old Carpathian Forest, Beherit and all things raw and black!
SUPER LIMITED CD-R. WE GOT 30 COPIES. ONCE THESE ARE GONE, NOT SURE WE CAN GET MORE!
As we mentioned a few lists back, we're way behind on our dutiful worship of the mighty Finnish beasts of grim blackness Horna. We reviewed their Bathory tribute record, and the split with Peste Noire, and now this, which is funny, since of these three, only the 7" truly reflected the true sound of Horna, a furious blasting brutality that has rarely been bested as far as we're concerned.
The Bathory tribute sounded like, well, like Horna doing Bathory, which is not a bad thing, as Horna were hugely influenced by Bathory, but it wasn't nearly as fierce or fucked as typical Horna.
And then there's this, Aania Yossa, a concept record about the black plague, which again sounds NOTHING like Horna typically does, but somehow it still sounds totally unlike anyone else. The speed ahs been swapped out for murky midtempo monotonous plod, the riffs smeared and blurred into black drones, creating one of the most mesmerizing and hypnotic black records ever.
The first three songs are all totally druggy and buzzy and super repetitive, the riffs sound almost looped, everything throbbing and pulsing over and over, only the vocals shrieking over the top offering any sort of variation, although every once in a while the band will slip into some killer convoluted breakdown, only to immediately ease back into that droning black dirge. Those three songs vary slightly from doomy plod to midtempo lurch, but form a pretty perfect blackdronedirge suite, that will either have you banging your head in a total trance or drifting off into some sort of other dreamstate dimension. Totally powerful in it's relentless hypnotic buzz, but repeated listening reveals all sorts of subtle hooks, and mysterious melodies buried amidst the murk and mire.
Then there's the 21 minute closer, the fastest track on the record, but even more intensely hypnotic, a single riff, a stumbling blast beat, intertwined and played over and over and over and over. Again, only a croaked demonic vocal offers any variation, while the music beneath continues to roil and churn and blast and draw us down into some whirling sonic altered state. So fucking awesome. Essential for anyone who likes their blackness dripping with DRONE. And as much as we love love LOVE every Horna release, this one, the one that doesn't sound like any of them, just might be our favorite.
Not technically a new release, but the first time on cd for some grim black rituals captured way back in 2004 by one of our favorite Finnish black metal hordes, Horna. And right out of the gate, it's everything we love about Horna, raw and grim and black, filthy and primitive, but also weirdly melodic and catchy, the opener "Piina" initially sounds like classic old school BM, but then Horna inject a woozy melancholy melody, which changes the tenor of the song big time, as it swings back and forth from pounding black filth, to moody lumbering depressive blackness, at some points it almost sounds like a muted muddied lo-fi Iron Maiden, which in the context of Horna's blackened sound is pretty excellent. And that song pretty much sets the template for the rest of the record, a blackened concoction equal parts grim black blast, and strange loping melodicism, the band never blast, but do get to some fairly punkish tempos, but also slip into weird waltzes and stumbling doomic pounds, the lilting melody of "Unohdetut Kasvot, Unohdettu Aani" is deftly wrapped around some furious black buzz, the result is dangerously lovely, and then there's "Oi Kallis Kotimaa", that's almost a sea shanty, with its jaunty tempo, epic soaring melodies and weird grunted sing songy vox, but the band quickly shift back into something much less melodic and way more grim in the form of the churning blackness of "Pohjanportti".
The final three tracks offer up more of that strange blend of buzz and howl, and moody melodic drift, dipping into Katatonia or Lifelover territory here and there, which is well balanced by bursts of serious blackness and gnarled UNmelodic riffs, like the one that bookends the impossibly lovely main melody of album closer "Menneiden Kaiku". Awesome.
It's hard to say exactly why, but Horna might just be our favorite black metal band EVER. No matter what we're listening to, no matter how heavy or dark or grim or fucked up or mind blowing that whatever is, the minute we throw some Horna on it's like all that listening never happened. We're suddenly in thrall to Horna's timeless black buzz. Ensorcelled, enraptured, smitten even. Horna are heavier than anything else, buzzier and more black. There's just something magical and mysterious about Horna, they're Finnish, that could be part of it. But their sound is totally unique, even though that sound is assembled from all the bits that make up all black metal. It's a sound simultaneously frenzied and furious and heavy as fuck, but also simple and punky, even a little groovy here and there, the songs swing wildly from impossibly blazing black blasts to lurching chug and back again. The guitars are massive and thick, and while Shatraug's vocals were always amazing, there's now a new second vocalist Corvus, the two mix it up big time, hellish shrieks, punk rock barks, death metal growls, all adding a weirdly emotional element to their grim blackness. And like most of our favorite bands, there's a definite pop element buried beneath, hooks all tangled up with the lurching, thrashing, head banging buzz, drifting just below the surface, making these songs not only brutal and black, but crazy fucking catchy as well. It's almost as if someone took Iron Maiden, dragged them into the forest, where they were forced fight and then mate with Darkthrone, then the offspring were fed human flesh and blast beats, slathered in corpsepaint and doused in black buzz, until they emerged feral and fucked up, demented and delirious, but ghostlike vestiges of their more traditional lineage continue to linger on. Fuck it. We could make up cool little stories and spend the next several paragraphs exhausting our black metal thesaurus, but basically, none of that really matters. This review could have been two words long. HORNA RULE. If you're into black metal, and you don't love Horna, then you're not. Not really. And if you're new to the genre and want to hear traditional black metal done about as well as humanly, or inhumanly possible, then Horna is the band to start with, and this double disc is as good a place as any to dive in...
We definitely don't give enough love to the mighty Horna. Finnish masters of raw and primitive, grim buzzing blackness. They're HUGE favorites with the metalheads around here and yet as of the writing of this here review, we've only ever listed ONE record by these guys, the recent split with Peste Noire, and while normally we would laugh in your face if you told us any band could beat the pants off of Peste Noire on a split, Horna damn near pulled it off.
So here's one of two new-ish Horna releases, this one was recorded in 2004, which, according to the liner notes was "before the Master's journey from here to eternity." Which master are they referring to? Well, as Sotahunto is a tribute to Swedish black metal masters Bathory, the master in question is Quorthon, the mastermind behind Bathory, who inspired a legion of blackened followers before passing away in June of 2004. And of course, as this is a tribute, the songs were composed in a style more similar to Bathory than Horna in some ways, although Horna always owned a sonic debt to their Swedish forbears, old school, raw blasting, almost punkish sounding black metal, pounding beats, relentless riffing, that unmistakable Horna shriek, fast and furious but with a definite groove. Not blasting so much as just relentlessly churning, midtempo dirges building to bursts of intense blackness. Lots of this still sounds like classic Horna, but they definitely honor their master with a suite of songs that sound like they could have come straight out of Sweden circa 1988. Awesome.
What more do you need to know? Finland's Horna. France's Peste Noire. Hard to imagine a more kick ass black metal match up. And sonically, a surprisingly suitable one.
The Horna track is epic and majestic, beginning with a cool backwards buzz guitar part, that segues into furious blackened riffing and a surprising amount of melody, sounding at moments like old At The Gates only blacker. The songs is laced with weird melancholy pounding, and haunting arpeggiated melodies, but all tangled up within dense blasts of hyper speed grimnity.
The Peste Noire track, some folks might already have, as it was a bonus track on the recent Peste Noire record Folkfuck Folie. Tangled and convoluted, the song structure constantly shifting, the guitars fuzzed out and insectoid, the vocals howling, it's definitely buzzing black metal, but in the hands of Peste Noire it becomes something else entirely, infusing the sound with bits of pop, melody, angular weirdness, turning it into an impossible catchy slab of black weirdness.
Obviously essential. And probably equally obvious is the fact that this is seriously limited, we got a bunch, but imagine they will be gone in no time. And yeah, they're a bit pricey, but you can blame the currently very sad US dollar�
Super thick vinyl, thick cardstock inner sleeves, and a super striking woodcut style outer jacket.
We have a long history of obsession with strange sounds from Scandinavia, whether it's all the hypnorock weirdness from Finland, grim blackness from Norway and Sweden or music performed on instruments made from ice, there's something about that stuff that we find irresistible. Not just sonically, but also conceptually. Which makes the provenance of this disc's arrival at aQ all the more wonderful. One day in the mail, a cd with a moose, standing in front of an open refrigerator, set amidst a sunset lit landscape of snow. On the back, drawings of men all wearing white hooded body suits, and all seemingly holding deer skulls and antlers. We were already sold, but the deal was sealed with the legend: "Originals and traditionals performed on stringed reindeer antlers." Which is exactly what this is, a series of haunting soundscapes, performed primarily on stringed and contact mic'd reindeer antlers, the strings and antlers bowed and plucked and scraped, those mysterious sounds accompanied by all manner of sticks, logs, rocks, bones and various field recordings, those field recordings giving the proceedings the air of some surreptitiously captured ancient ritual. There are more traditional instruments as well, drums, flutes, fiddles, guitars, but those are employed judiciously, and most often merely to color the background over which the antler skulls hum and thrum, shimmer and moan.
It's no surprise that David Tibet of Current 93 is a fan, and maybe even less of a surprise that so is�Fenriz of Darkthrone (who even did a '90s acid techno remix of 'em which works surprisingly well! Not included here, sadly...), the sound of Hornorkesteret definitely plays into C93's ritualistic ambient folk, and Darkthrone's Norwegian pride, but beyond that, the sounds here are unlike anything you've heard. If we had to compare it to anything, we might mention Avarus, No Neck Blues Band, the aforementioned ice instruments of Terje Isungset, there's definitely a murky, primitive, tribal krautrock vibe, not to mention a certain hauntological bent, especially on the first track (more on that in a second), but ultimately, this is some fantastic raw sonic exploration, a mysterious songsuite, atmospheric, haunting and strangely psychedelic in its own way.
This disc collects the group's best recordings from the last ten years, and begins with what might be the weirdest one, "Elegi For Roald Amundsen", which begins with a staticky shortwave broadcast, a lost radio transmission of a voices speaking in Norwegian, beneath which, the stringed antlers rumble and hum, weaving a dark shimmery drift, driven by a low pulsing thrum, all the while wreathed in a warm crackle, totally mesmerizing and strangely evocative of some impossible melding of ancient tribal ritual and 'modern' technology. It had us imaging some ancient Norwegian tribe, who discovered an old transistor radio, which they assumed must have come from the gods, and every mysterious broadcast was a message from beyond, which they paid tribute by accompanying on their bowed skulls and stringed antlers. Elsewhere, the group weave darkly meditative and ominously rhythmic soundscapes of thrum and rumble, over beds of rushing water and birdsong, or pounding stretches of almost Dead C worthy abstract atmospheric psychedelia, or groaning surreal ambience that reminds us quite a bit of an even more abstract take on Nurse With Wound's Salt Marie Celeste. The tracks vary greatly, from spare and minimal, to dense and rhythmic, at one point detouring into pure Norwegian folk, and at another into something almost funky, a sort of super rhythmic kraut-groove, but for the most part, spends the majority of its time in some haunting sonic otherworld, a transmission from a lost time, delivered in a lost language of sound, the stories and lives and memories conveyed via this strange music, performed on skulls and bones, captured here for eternity.
Our pals at Conspiracy Records, a label/distro based in Belgium, who in the past have brought us records by Boris, Jesu, Shora and more, are this year celebrating their 10 year anniversary. A decade of amazing music. From a bedroom based punk label, to one of Europe's most important and influential labels and distros, all we can say is HURRAY! And HUZZAH! It's always so exciting, when a bunch of folks get together to spread the word about great music, great WEIRD music, and survive, even thrive. Such is the case with Conspiracy. And as if that weren't already enough, just knowing that some great people were selling some amazing music, those sweeties at Conspiracy have decided to share the love with us. And you.
To celebrate their 10th anniversary, they've decided to do a super limited subscription series, 12 records over 12 months, each limited to somewhere between 200-500 copies, ONLY available to series subscribers. EXCEPT, they've decided to let AQ have 20 copies of each, we're the only store with copies of these subscriber only lps, and for a brief moment, we can offer them to you, our loyal AQ customers. Needless to say we are thrilled, as the series lineup reads like a who's who of AQ faves, as well as including a handful of lesser knowns. All pressed on super thick vinyl, and packaged in killer hand screened original art sleeves. But be warned, we only got 20 of each, and we will run out fast and we will not be able to get more. When we do run out, there is a chance you can still get more (or even subscribe to the series) from Conspiracy direct, but what that means is act fast and prepare to leave empty handed.
Horns are a Belgian super group of sorts, drawn from all sorts of legendary outfits, not a single one we'd heard of. But this slab of freaked out sonic weirdness has us making lists of all these bands we need to track down. Cuz Horns are one mighty damaged super fucked up and gloriously noisy beast. The band describe their sound as "wild and free improvisations. 78 bpm wounded prog from hell's children's corner. An encyclopedia of fatal mistakes crammed into a power ballad's intro" or alternately a "dirty avantnoiseambientbitchesbrew", both of which come pretty dang close. A seriously demented outrock psychedelic free for all, super angular guitar, killer pounding Albini-ish drums, throbbing low end bass rumble, everything doused in swirling fuzzed out super distorted affects, a dense cloud of malfunctioning electronics and processed vocals. Like some insane tagteam match between Shellac, Whitehouse and Acid Mothers Temple while some misguided DJ keeps dropping in bits of black metal and Hawkwind, and another Dj does his best to scratch and beat match, using nothing but the two bloody stumps where his hands used to be. Awesome!
Original artwork by artist Jella Crama, who also hand silkscreened each copy. The LP's are pressed on super thick 180 gram vinyl and housed in thick plastic sleeves.
Behold, the first full-length, facegrinding slab of psychedelic stoner rock malevolence from these San Francisco heavies, the all-caps and very plural HORNSS, who appeared on that Monsters Of Mission Rock comp lp we listed last time. Hell yeah. A little Sabbath, a little Hawkwind, probably a lot of beer and weed, this is kinda trippy, and super HEAVY - another thing we must put in all-caps about 'em.
HORNSS sure have a lot of gnarly gargly punked out energy to their hard, rollicking riffing, which goes hand in hand (and fist in face) with the raggedly wailing vocals that, while gruff, we found to be much more melodic than expected (and we're not talking about the dainty female guest vox on the track "Ejaculation Of Serpents"). Groovy sludge, sludgey groove, did we already say "hell yeah"? We did. And we will again, every time we spin this. No Blood, No Sympathy sure can be a real ripper, reminding us of young hardcore Melvins on such cuts as "Graceless And Aged", while also having its laid back moments of spacey Sabbathy "Planet Caravan" style psychedelia, elsewhere. The Melvins comparison also comes into play on "Debreeding", where the vocals make us think of Buzz Osbourne singing an Alice Cooper cover.
All lovers of the riff, all lovers of the rockin', can chalk up another big win for the Easy Rider label (billed here as Riding Easy for some reason, but it's the same label we're pretty sure, they're not foolin' anyone)!
Horrid Red can hardly be qualified as a side-project anymore, but pretty much everything born from the twisted vision of Glenn Donaldson is in a constant transformation from one aesthetic strain and/or band to another. Horrid Red emerged out of the creative overload of Teenage Panzerkorps through the talents of Donaldson (here cloaked in the guise of Edmund Xavier) and the Teutonic punk vocalist Bunker Wolf. Where Der TPK blasted outward as a furiously darkened drone-punk, Horrid Red sought more of an elegant take on the post-punk agenda with Factory inspired synths and Death In June's urgent acoustic guitars; but those megaphone vocals from Bunker Wolf on all of the Horrid Red and Der TPK recordings make the projects somewhat interchangable and just goddamn great! Celestial Joy is the second record in about twelve months for Horrid Red, following Der TPK's impressive German Reggae and a 'singles' collection; and this album finds Burial Hex's Clay Ruby joining the fray. Some of the songs on Celestial Joy seek a minimal-wave brightness such as on the skittering groove of "Marble Staircase, III" complete with electric piano lines and Bunker Wolf crooning the vocals instead of barking them through a megaphone. "Nothing In My Heart" cops a few choice guitar licks from The Cure's "In Between Days." But other tracks sport the bass-driven punk propulsive favored by Der TPK, such as "Men And Sand" and the death-disco vibes on the title track.
The Holiday Records vinyl version of Celestial Joy is limited to 400 copies and comes with a much nicer print-job on the artwork than the domestic version, hence the higher price.
Horrid Red can hardly be qualified as a side-project anymore, but pretty much everything born from the twisted vision of Glenn Donaldson is in a constant transformation from one aesthetic strain and/or band to another. Horrid Red emerged out of the creative overload of Teenage Panzerkorps through the talents of Donaldson (here cloaked in the guise of Edmund Xavier) and the Teutonic punk vocalist Bunker Wolf. Where Der TPK blasted outward as a furiously darkened drone-punk, Horrid Red sought more of an elegant take on the post-punk agenda with Factory inspired synths and Death In June's urgent acoustic guitars; but those megaphone vocals from Bunker Wolf on all of the Horrid Red and Der TPK recordings make the projects somewhat interchangable and just goddamn great! Celestial Joy is the second record in about twelve months for Horrid Red, following Der TPK's impressive German Reggae and a 'singles' collection; and this album finds Burial Hex's Clay Ruby joining the fray. Some of the songs on Celestial Joy seek a minimal-wave brightness such as on the skittering groove of "Marble Staircase, III" complete with electric piano lines and Bunker Wolf crooning the vocals instead of barking them through a megaphone. "Nothing In My Heart" cops a few choice guitar licks from The Cure's "In Between Days." But other tracks sport the bass-driven punk propulsive favored by Der TPK, such as "Men And Sand" and the death-disco vibes on the title track.
The Holiday Records vinyl version of Celestial Joy is limited to 400 copies and comes with a much nicer print-job on the artwork than the domestic version, hence the higher price.
Horrid Red can hardly be qualified as a side-project anymore, but pretty much everything born from the twisted vision of Glenn Donaldson is in a constant transformation from one aesthetic strain and/or band to another. Horrid Red emerged out of the creative overload of Teenage Panzerkorps through the talents of Donaldson (here cloaked in the guise of Edmund Xavier) and the Teutonic punk vocalist Bunker Wolf. Where Der TPK blasted outward as a furiously darkened drone-punk, Horrid Red sought more of an elegant take on the post-punk agenda with Factory inspired synths and Death In June's urgent acoustic guitars; but those megaphone vocals from Bunker Wolf on all of the Horrid Red and Der TPK recordings make the projects somewhat interchangable and just goddamn great! Celestial Joy is the second record in about twelve months for Horrid Red, following Der TPK's impressive German Reggae and a 'singles' collection; and this album finds Burial Hex's Clay Ruby joining the fray. Some of the songs on Celestial Joy seek a minimal-wave brightness such as on the skittering groove of "Marble Staircase, III" complete with electric piano lines and Bunker Wolf crooning the vocals instead of barking them through a megaphone. "Nothing In My Heart" cops a few choice guitar licks from The Cure's "In Between Days." But other tracks sport the bass-driven punk propulsive favored by Der TPK, such as "Men And Sand" and the death-disco vibes on the title track.
The Holiday Records vinyl version of Celestial Joy is limited to 400 copies and comes with a much nicer print-job on the artwork than the domestic version, hence the higher price.
An offshoot of Teenage Panzerkorps / Der TPK, Horrid Red is described by the band's Glenn "Edmund Xavier" Donaldson as a militant new wave project somewhere near the likes of Death In June circa Nada. A beloved album of Death In June fans for sure, but Nada was a very clumsy attempt at bringing an occult obliqueness and right-wing imagery to the more romantic strains of new wave - Donanldson's recapitulation of '80s stark post-punk is WAY better.
The name Horrid Red might also be a play on the peculiar, forgotten new wave iconoclast Snowy Red, who sort of fell between Suicide and Fad Gadget; this was a band that Donaldson once professed considerable admiration for. That said, Horrid Red doesn't fall that far from the TPK sound, especially since Bunker Wolf is very present in delivering his booming Teutonic vocals with megaphone volume and clarity. Donaldson's arrangements are more stripped down than in TPK, but no-less spiky with their propulsive basslines, and also feature these sad, melodic leads that certainly look back to his earlier work in the Knit Separates and early Blithe Sons. But then there are the minor-key, haunted synths that take a page out of the Blessure Grave / Zola Jesus playbook and the minimal wave rhythms that gird almost every song. Released on Holiday Records, who seem to be the Sacred Bones of Italy. A necessary album for all fans of the recent wave of new goth. Limited to 300 copies!
Half of Teenage Panzerkorps comprises Horrid Red, including the Teutonic punk vocalist Bunker Wolf and the multi-instrumentalist Edmund Xavier (aka Glenn Donaldson of all things Jewelled Antler). Those familiar with Bunker Wolf's Teutonic vocal bark from Der TPK will instantly recognize it here as well, although the Horrid Red sound is a little different from Der TPK's grimy punk hypnosis, as this has got much more of a neo-goth / cold-wave vibe with springy basslines and motorik-pop rhythms butting against atonal swarms of guitar noise and morose synth atmospheres, that come together sounding a lot like Blessure Grave trying to cover "Love Will Tear Us Apart" but mixing up the bassline with a Cure song instead. Limited to 300 copies, comes with a download coupon.
Another blast of post-apocalyptic cold-wave inspired dark goth-pop from Horrid Red. Comprised of members of Teenage Panzerkorps, including the ever prolific and talented Glenn Donaldson (Art Museums, Skygreen Leopards, Jewelled Antler, etc.) as well as a rotating cast of band members including some AQ alumni.
"Silent Party" is perhaps the most infectious song Horrid Red have crafted yet. Sounding like some lost gem of gloomy dark wave pop that one might hear on some awesome reissue by Dark Entries. But just as we played that song over and over several times and finally allowed ourselves to hear the next track "The Horror & The Cruelty" we had to seriously rethink if this track now takes the cake for their best blast of sneering motorik Fad Gaget inspired darkness.
The two tracks on the B side "Marble Staircase" and "Parts I & II" are less immediate but showcase their ability to create a downer atmosphere with such success.
At a time when we've been getting lots of 7"s with just one killer song, we appreciate that there are four totally strong tracks on this 7" making it well worth the price.
If you like your rock'n'roll on the sweaty, trashy and garage-y side, The Horrors may be just the thing for you. This Iowa trio kick up quite the howl'n'stomp storm on Vent, the follow-up to last year's self-titled debut. Searing abrasive retro blues raunch'n'roll!
MPEG Download: "Karen" [/audio/horrorskaren.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Karen" [/audio/horrorskaren.m3u]
AQ pal and Pink of Pink and Brown Mr. John Dwyer recommended this lovely release to us. Word is, the guy who owns In The Red likes them so much that he not only put this cd out, but roadies for them as well. A raw and raunchy combo from Cedar Rapids, IA who formed three years ago at the tender age of 18. Their self proclaimed influences range from Leadbelly to Black Sabbath to Doo Rag to Dr. Dre to Pussy Galore to Prince. The sound isn't nearly so eclectic, but it is pretty great. Lo-fi, high energy, stripped down, haphazard, kick your dick in the dirt, punk rock garage kicks. Sadie says "Hell yeah!"
Baltimore's Horse Lords scrawl delightfully squiggly line drawings of instrumental motorik jams that might look sort of like Laddio Bollocko, early Circle, Faust, Neu, or even This Heat if you were squint hard enough. This four-piece interweaves hillbilly-raga guitar tangles and droning stabs of saxophone through a daisy-chain of delay pedals and tape-loop accumulators that top their archetypal kraut rhythm section of one-the-one bassline throb and some serious Jaki Leibezeit worship going on behind the drum kit. Saxophonist Andrew Bernstein keeps the expository investigations through his instrument to a minimum, and he's at his best when he nestles all of the blurting / bleating notes into harmonious interlocking patterns that ripple through the echoing electronics. Similarly, Owen Gardner's guitar settles into hypno-rock, jitterbug jangle that rings with the harmonic dissonance of Chatham, Branca, or Conrad. The two of them never fight over each other, instead working to balance and complement the two instruments in their mutual pursuit of groovy art-rock. Each of the tracks exhibit a couple of start-stop-start-again-in-another-direction big changes to what Horse Lords do, but it never sounds self-indulgent or wanky. It all comes together as a profoundly jubilant mess that works very, very well. Yup, download included with this piece of wax.
Imagine The Locust, if instead of being raised on a steady diet of grind and hardcore, they were only allowed to listen to Magma and Yes and E.L.P. Okay, and maybe a little Black Flag. Well, you might start to get a feeling for this oddly named combo. Horse The Band are a stumbling chaotic maelstrom of shouted vocals, off kilter rhythms, shards of angualr guitar, and totally fucked prog-tastic keyboards! So wild and fun and spastic and awesome! Definitely like Yes, if they were 15 year old hardcore kids, with beat up guitars, a casio, and all their be-patched backpacks piled up in a corner of the practice space. Drunk on Yoohoo and Redbull, doing their best to out prog, out spazz, and out ROCK all comers!
Here's some crazy keyboard punk rock metalcore blurt from Horse The Band on their second energetic full-length, released last fall (yeah, we're playing catch-up here, been meaning to list this for a while) on the newly revitalized Combat imprint. Looks like Combat's speed/death metal focus back in the '80s has given way to a new breed of blenderized indie-punk kinda-metal. Horse The Band, anyway, is the best thing on the new Combat. With loads of heavy guitars, pummelling drums, honkin' synth, screamo vox, emo melody, and mathy song constructs, all tightly wound and ready to explode, this will appeal to fans of of An Albatross, The Locust, that sort of thing. This also reminds us a bit of Reggie and the Full Effect's take on "Raining Blood" on that I Love Metal covers comp a few years ago...
A while back we reviewed a crazy limited tape from Horseback, aka Jenks Miller, called Stolen Fire, which was a crazy good collection of odds and ends, random demos, electronic experiments, weird warped pop songs, the sort of stuff that's slowly been finding its way on to more and more Horseback records proper. Sadly, we were only able to get ten copies of the tape, which disappeared in a flash. When we contacted Miller to get more, after informing us the tape was gone, he did let us know that it would be coming out cd eventually. And here it is, as part of a triple cd set! Including said tape, a whole disc of live recordings, and a disc of rarities, splits and singles, from splits with Voltigeurs, Pyramids, Locrian and other aQ faves. Might as well start with Stolen Fire since that's what got us all excited about this set in the first place.
The opening track is a super minimal, drum machine driven chunk of stripped down skeletal kraut-pop, woozy and laid back, spidery guitar melodies, a weary crooned vocal, darkly dreamy and subtly psychedelic. The follow up is a strange chunk of gristly industrial ambience, all hiss and crackle and high end skree, like an amp feeding back in the rain, with just a bit of those weird garbled vocals that were all over the last Horseback record, doused in FX and reverb. The rest of the side unfurls like the opener, looped rhythms, subtle shifting textures, a little bit tribal, sometimes sounding like recent aQ faves Silent Servant, a definite dark techno vibe to some of the proceedings, everything wreathed in a softly distorted haze, all kinda krauty and darkly hypnotic, with the occasional even poppier jams emerging from the murk, all Casio drum machine and shimmery eighties chords, one of those jams sounds a bit like the love theme from some mysterious B-movie, when the main melody comes in, it's almost like James Ferraro or Ariel Pink, which is not a bad thing at all, just unexpected. There's weirdly crooned vox popping up throughout, that suits the music to a T. There are brief bits of super distorted atmospheric heaviness, blissed out blackened, and in some cases quite dreamy.
The 'Destroyed Demo Version' of "North Star Struck", which we dug so much on the tape, is present, and still has us envisioning blown out crumble and in-the-red crunch, and while it's not quite that, it is pretty awesomely dirgey and fuzzy, a dark sprawl of tranced out hypno-rock, like Circle on downers, the whole thing wreathed in clouds of cosmic FX and wild sci-fi squiggles, woozy organ melodies, all around that churning kraut-drone groove, and it never lets up, the sound locks in and plays out until the rock begins to fade, leaving just pulsing electronics and a staticky cloud of gristly haze. So great! And "Transparency (Murdered Again)", another track from the tape we loved, is more of the same, a gauze-y, heady drift of psychedelic shimmer, wheezing chords and spidery twang, which is soon joined by a strangely looped rhythm, the sounds all coalescing into a strangely stuttering minimal zoner groove, another track that sounds like warped, zombified Circle, slowed way down, a seriously hypnotic sprawl of hypno kraut mesmer. In addition to the tracks from the tape, there are a bunch of extra unreleased tracks and previously unreleased versions, and even though they aren't proper Horseback songs, like we said in our review of the tape,they might be some of the coolest stuff we've heard from Horseback yet!
And heck, that's just one of the three discs! The singles and rarities disc is pretty stellar as well, and includes a bunch of tracks from singles we never knew existed, as well as tracks from a few we've reviewed, not to mention a Stooges cover!! The two tracks from the split with Voltigeurs are some sort of alien black prog. The first all buzzing guitars, pounding drums, harsh hellish vokills, and lots of ELP style organs (!), which transforms the sound into something way weirder, and frankly way cooler. The organs swirl and pulse and buzz over murky drum pound and those blackened shrieks, those blackened sounds slowed down, like some bizarre mash up of Burzum at 16rpm and ELP at 33, the keyboards make the sound more psychedelic and spacey, and fuse perfectly into a gloriously twisted hybrid, one that is peppered with squalls of freaked out psychedelic noise, and culminates in a gorgeous Burzumic outro, all blown out drone riffage and buried anguished howls, mesmerizing and mysterious. The second track is soaring and epic and a little blackened, but sounds more static, more like a sort of Sunroof!-style ur-drone, draped over blasting beats nearly lost in the churn and swirl, harsh vox here too, the overall sound extra distorted, glimmery and glistening and downtuned and crumbling, as if the signal is way too hot for the speakers, which makes it sound noisier for sure, but also mesmerizingly psychedelic. The HB track from the split with Pyramids is a feral blast of black metal, a frantic blast beat beneath buzzing guitars that almost sounds more like blackened gypsy folk than black metal proper, until the vokills come in, and the demonic shriek clears that all up, before changing gears half way through and transitioning into a gorgeously decayed crumbling distorted dronescape. Then there's the track from their split 7" with Locrian, a hazy droned out raga, centered around a glorious high end drone, all shimmer and reverberation, the sound sun dappled and gloriously effulgent, very much like Sunroof!, mesmerizing and dreamlike, to which HB adds, some twisted gnarled vocals, all hissy and demonic, wreathing the whole thing in little melodic tendrils, the sound blissed out and gauzy, the blackness seemingly held at bay by this shining sonic light, the sort of track that we could listen to forEVER. HB's track from the 4 way split tape on Handmade Birds with Njiqahdda, Venowl and Cara Neir is also included, sounding like it could have come right off of their Half Blood record. Rhythmic and hypnotic, bass and drum locked into a sort of hypnorock groove, laced with fluttering flutes, weird electronics, swirling shimmering melodies, when the guitar comes in, it's sort of washed out and droney, giving the track an almost Earth-like vibe, the overall sound is like a super cyclical krautrock styled minimalism, with an epic second half, replete with those shrieked black metal vox. And there's of course more more more!!
Finally, the third disc features two long tracks, the first a 20 minute live performance of the first HB record, "Impale Golden Horn", recorded in 2007 in North Carolina, and it's a dreamy sprawl of softly smoldering burnished thrum and rumble, laced with dreamike psychedelic filigree and soft chordal swells, which leads perfectly into the previously unreleased 40+ minute "A Plague Of Knowing", which is a gorgeous sprawling Sunroof-style ur-drone, a dreamy psychedelic soft noise haze that swirls and shimmers and blurs into billowing clouds of blissed out drift!
Comes in a fold out 8 panel digipak style sleeve, withe some seriously extensive liner notes!!!
It's always difficult to know exactly what to expect from Horseback, the one man black metal / drone / psych project of Jenks Miller, every record is different, and every record over the course of the album shifts constantly, yet we're always pretty blown away. And this new one, just like the last few, confuses from the get-go. Opening with a mathy sort of post rock groove, all clean guitar jangle, churning distorted bassline, and warbly organ, and then the vocals, a weirdly distorted black metal rasp, which is only really weird paired with post rock. But it sounds killer, the record sounds massive, the drums crushing, the instruments lush and layered, the vocals the only thing pointing to anything other than post rock. Minus those, it sounds more like Skull Defekts or maybe Lungfish or even Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat. But that was just the first track, which as we've learned is hardly an indicator of what's to come. But here it sort of is, as the second track is another lumbering post rock groove, all big drums and spidery guitar melodies, and again driven by some serious distorted bass heft. Replace those vokills with say Dan Higgs, and this WOULD be a dead ringer for an as yet unreleased Skull Defekts record. A strange twist for sure, but it suits him, as so any seemingly disparate sounds do.
And so it goes, we were steeled for the eventual crush, the track that would suddenly splinter into some brooding black dirgery, or some furious blasting blackness, but nope, this is the sound of the new Horseback, a twisted slightly blackened post rock, and we dig it. The rest of the record is peppered with a handful of tracks that slip back into a more blissed out drone sound, at one point blossoming into a glorious Sunroof!-like ur-drone rife with strange shortwave interference and dreamy drifty melodies, while another track drags those raspy vokills in and rapes them over some ethereal shimmer, making for even stranger bedfellows. The post rock jams get even stranger, when Miller switches to clean vocals, and it couldn't be further removed from the Horseback(s) of old, and then there's the gorgeously blissed out final track, a 12 minute raga, that laces stuttery melodies and processed vox over a simple pulsing krautrock like beat, all wreathed in a haze of synth shimmer and guitar buzz, sounding a bit like Stereolab crossed with Amps For Christ, which if you couldn't tell by that description, might make it our favorite track of the bunch.
Drone records are a dime a dozen these days. Not that we don't love drone records, we do. In fact, often we're way too easy on the purveyors of drone, since the very essence of that sound, is so simple, and yet so completely satisfying to listen to. A guitar against the amp, a handful of keys on a keyboard held down, a loop cycled over and over and over, almost any sound smeared into a near static drift, we could listen to that stuff forever, and often do. But it's the rare drone record that uses the drone as just the jumping off point, as a foundation upon which to build a fragile and ephemeral structure of minimal melody and movement, instead of the beginning AND end. Stars Of The Lid are a good example, as is William Basinski, Tim Hecker and a handful of others.�
Horseback too. We were sent this disc out of the blue and immediately fell in love. Only later to discover that this was the work of a faithful AQ mailorder customer by the name of Jenks Miller! Small world. Horseback is most definitely a drone record, but manages to incorporate plenty of not specifically drone-like sounds. At once massive and dense, dark and distorted, but also ephemeral and airy, soaring and dreamlike. The root of the sound is a guitar, or guitars, allowed to reverberate and ring out, unfurling billowing clouds of distorted buzz and whir, that settles on the speaker like a thick blanket of snow, glistening and blinding, but at the same time warm and enveloping. The guitars pulse and swell, melodies drifting in and out, streaks of feedback, all wound up into a huge softly roiling glowing orb of sound.�
It's almost unfair to call this a drone record, as it's so lush, and rich, and full of motion, sprawling out like some sort of sonic sunrise, the sounds gradually changing color, everything shifting and shimmering and transforming subtly as the record progresses. So much more than just a simple 'drone' record. In fact, it's easy to hear Galaxie 500, Spacemen 3, Loop, Flying Saucer Attack, that sort of spaced out doped up drift, all smeared into Horseback's haunting sun dappled world of slow burning sound.
Elsewhere piano drifts amidst the dense guitar swells, and rhythms are provided by pulsing guitars and various sounds beating against one another. Vocals hover way below the surface, barely audible, but adding another layer of lilting mystery, near the end, the guitars peel back gradually revealing a blurry expanse of swirling cymbals and splattery free jazz percussion, all spread out into a buzzy sizzling swirl, over which the final haunting piano notes drift and fade. So gorgeous. Absolutely one of our favorite new records, a practically perfect fade-out-drift-off-drone-dream-disc, and quite an auspicious start for this brand new label...
It's not just us that thought Horseback's latest album was so awesome. A blurb taken from the following review of ours does appear on this Relapse-reissued and repackaged top obi, alongside similarly enthusiastic quotes from both The Wire magazine and Invisible Oranges blog.
Originally released by the amazing Utech label, this album garnered the attention of the corporate metal overlords (just kidding) at Relapse, who obviously thought it could, and should, find a wider audience. Good for Horseback! Definitely pick this one up if you missed the Utech edition. Here's what we said about it before:
Something very strange must have transpired since the last Horseback disc. Something traumatic maybe? Some spiritual crisis of sonic faith? Where that record was a glistening, glimmering, dreamy, drifty drone record, this one is, well, much heavier, and more rocking, and WAY more intense and EVIL sounding. So much so that it almost sounds like a different band. That said, we dig it. A LOT.
Super intense, and super heavy psychedelic twang flecked metallic post rock. The guitars buzz, and drone, and occasionally twang, the drums are powerful, tight, the instruments locked into slow burning build ups, some strange hybrid of newer Earth, Godspeed, Circle, the Necks and maybe a little Scenic. There's a sort of krautrock vibe going on too. Sun baked, a little lysergic, space-y hypnotic, repetitive, the tracks looooooong, with mostly a single part, that gradually builds and builds. The cool thing is it never explodes into a metal coda, a la Isis or Neurosis or a million other bands, it's all about the journey not the destination, and the journey is riveting enough without tacking on an explosive blow out.
But then there's the vocals, a harsh demonic rasp totally at odds with the music beneath, which in some ways makes the combination sound that much more intense and evil. Especially when the rasps are locked in a sort of call and response with the guitars, really strange but definitely compelling.
The first three tracks are variations on a theme, each an incredible slab of brooding, mesmerizing hypno-rock, lush and layered, with tons of cool little extra guitar flourishes, the drums busy enough to be interesting, but still locked tight into the groove, those vocals, adding menace for sure, but also a strange element that as mentioned above changes the whole feel. A track will be moody and woozy and will suddenly sound a bit evil, or at least a little ominous, before slipping back into the loping, pounding crush of the main riffs.
The strangest thing about this record is that the track with the most overtly evil title, the closer "Hatecloud Dissolving Into Nothing", is the least heavy or evil of the bunch, and the only track that sounds like the first Horseback record. A 16+ minute drift of soft focus new age-y ambience, of dreamy drift, sun dappled guitars draped over long stretches of gauzy whir, the sound delicate and crystalline, definitely dreamy and blissed out, the only remnant of the tracks that came before, are some barely audible harsh vokills, way way way down in the mix, that almost sound like a slow shifting layer of hiss or buzz, beneath the kaleidoscopic shimmer of blurred guitar hum and melancholic melody, another strange combination, but similar to the vocals on the first three tracks, they lend a very subtle hint of menace to the otherwise tranquil proceedings.
The new jewelcase packaging is still quite nice, though not as gorgeous as the original Utech sleeve.
This is not brand new, we somehow missed out on this when it first came out, but seeing as we're such huge fans of North Carolina's Horseback, we figured we'd get a handful of these, and holy shit, it's good. Two tracks, perfectly straddling the two sides of the group, the gorgeous blackened ambient drift, and the buzzing abstract avant black metal crush. Which makes sense as it came out right before their full length on Utech.
The A-side is a gorgeous cloud of mournful melodic drift, a haunting slow motion melody, played out in a haze of shimmering distortion and strange sonic grit, wreathed by streaks of cascading feedback, while buried vox howl in the ether. Some serious dreamlike black ambience, softly propulsive, definitely intense and caustic, but simultaneously languid and lovely.
The flipside takes the same sonic template, but blurs the sounds even further into a continuous black buzz, adding some murky blasting rhythms, a heaving, churning stretch of abstract black hole heaviness. LIMITED TO ONLY 250 COPIES! Comes with a Horseback sticker, quite possibly the last copies we'll be able to get.
We only got a tiny handful of these, about ten, direct from the band, AND it was limited to just 150 copies, AND is basically already sold out, which of course means grab one of these before they're gone!
Stolen Fire is a collection of odds and ends, random demos, electronic experiments, weird warped pop songs, a lot of stuff that has slowly been finding its way on to more and more Horseback records proper, the opening track here is a super minimal, drum machine driven chunk of stripped down skeletal kraut-pop, woozy and laid back, spidery guitar melodies, a weary crooned vocal, darkly dreamy and subtly psychedelic. The follow up is a strange chunk of gristly industrial ambience, all hiss and crackle and high end skree, like an amp feeding back in the rain, with just a bit of those weird garbled vocals that were all over the last Horseback, doused in FX and reverb. The rest of the side unfurls like the opener, looped rhythms, subtle shifting textures, a little bit tribal, wreathed in a softly distorted haze, again kinda krauty and darkly hypnotic, before an even poppier jam emerges from the murk, all Casio drum machine and shimmery eighties chords, it sounds a bit like the love theme from some mysterious B-movie, when the main melody comes in, it's almost like James Ferraro or Ariel Pink, which is not a bad thing at all, just unexpected. Here too, there's weirdly crooned vox, that suit the music to a T. There's a brief bit of super distorted atmospheric heaviness finishing things off, blissed out blackend dreaminess that is WAY too brief.
The B side is split into two lengthy tracks, the first a 'Destroyed Demo Version' which had us envisioning blown out crumble and in-the-red crunch, and while it's not quite that, it is pretty awesomely dirgey and fuzzy, a dark sprawl of tranced out hypno-rock, like Circle on downers, the whole thing wreathed in clouds of cosmic FX and wild sci-fi squiggles, woozy organ melodies, all around that churning kraut-drone groove, and it never lets up, the sound locks in and plays out until the rock begins to fade, leaving just pulsing electronics and a staticky cloud of gristly haze. So great! And the closer is more of the same, a gauze-y, heady drift of psychedelic shimmer, wheezing chords and spidery twang, which is soon joined by a strangely looped rhythm, the sounds all coalescing into a strangely stuttering minimal zoner groove, another track that sounds like warped, zombified Circle, slowed way down, a seriously hypnotic sprawl of hypno kraut mesmer, and even those these aren't proper Horseback songs, they might be some of the coolest stuff we've heard from him/them. Too bad it's so limited.
ONLY 150 COPIES!!! And as we mentioned before it's already sold out, and these are the last copies we'll be able to get...
We initially reviewed the first disc of this 2cd set way back in 2007 and proclaimed it "absolutely one of our favorite new records, a practically perfect fade-out-drift-off-drone-dream-disc", and lest we forget, Relapse has printed that right on the front of this reissue, which takes that record, and bundles it with a super limited cassette release from 2010 called Forbidden Planet, available on cd for the very first time, originally a tape that was so limited we never actually got ANY copies at all. So this reissue seemed destined to be a Record Of The Week, that classic Horseback debut available again, and what essentially amounts to a whole new full length that most folks never got their hands on either. Here's what we had to say about Impale Golden Horn when we first heard it way back in 2007:
Drone records are a dime a dozen. Not that we don't love drone records, we do. In fact, often we're way too easy on the purveyors of drone, since the very essence of that sound, is so simple, and yet so completely satisfying to listen to. A guitar against the amp, a handful of keys on a keyboard held down, a loop cycled over and over and over, almost any sound smeared into a near static drift, we could listen to that stuff forever, and often do. But it's the rare drone record that uses the drone as just the jumping off point, as a foundation upon which to build a fragile and ephemeral structure of minimal melody and movement, instead of the beginning AND end. Stars Of The Lid are a good example, as is William Basinski, Tim Hecker and a handful of others.
Horseback too. We were sent this disc out of the blue and immediately fell in love. Only later to discover that this was the work of a faithful AQ mailorder customer by the name of Jenks Miller! Small world. Horseback is most definitely a drone record, but manages to incorporate plenty of not specifically drone-like sounds. At once massive and dense, dark and distorted, but also ephemeral and airy, soaring and dreamlike. The root of the sound is a guitar, or guitars, allowed to reverberate and ring out, unfurling billowing clouds of distorted buzz and whir, that settles on the speaker like a thick blanket of snow, glistening and blinding, but at the same time warm and enveloping. The guitars pulse and swell, melodies drifting in and out, streaks of feedback, all wound up into a huge softly roiling glowing orb of sound.
It's almost unfair to call this a drone record, as it's so lush, and rich, and full of motion, sprawling out like some sort of sonic sunrise, the sounds gradually changing color, everything shifting and shimmering and transforming subtly as the record progresses. So much more than just a simple 'drone' record. In fact, it's easy to hear Galaxie 500, Spacemen 3, Loop, Flying Saucer Attack, that sort of spaced out doped up drift, all smeared into Horseback's haunting sun dappled world of slow burning sound.
Elsewhere piano drifts amidst the dense guitar swells, and rhythms are provided by pulsing guitars and various sounds beating against one another. Vocals hover way below the surface, barely audible, but adding another layer of lilting mystery, near the end, the guitars peel back gradually revealing a blurry expanse of swirling cymbals and splattery free jazz percussion, all spread out into a buzzy sizzling swirl, over which the final haunting piano notes drift and fade. So gorgeous. Absolutely one of our favorite new records, a practically perfect fade-out-drift-off-drone-dream-disc
Then there's Forbidden Planet. By now, the one thing we've learned about Horseback is that their sound seems to change dramatically with every record, gorgeous hazy drones on one release, buzzing blasting black metal on the next, so it's really impossible to predict what the next record will sound like. Which makes pairing two Horseback records together an interesting challenge. Forbidden Planet opens up with what might be the perfect balance of the two, buzzing layered guitars, wound into a heavy slice of dark metallic drone, but laced with hellishly growled black metal vokills, as if that weren't far out enough, there's also shards of glitchy electronics, a weird industrial component, which just adds a whole other vibe. Cuz minus those strange sounds, it begins to sound like black metal loosed from any rhythms and slowed way down, and thus transformed into a sort of buzzing black dronemusic, which does seems to be the theme of the whole record, blackened riffing pulled apart and stretched into sprawling expanses of majestic buzz, laced with weird vox, rumbling basslines, and streaks of feedback. In some ways it reminds us of Mick Barr's Ocrilim, which did something similar, taking just the riffs, that distinctly epic and majestic minor key black metal style riffery, and repeating, looping, layering, and transforming it into something much more abstract and minimal. Which is definitely what's going on here. But Horseback sounds more organic, the sounds more raw, bleeding into each other, the distinction between notes and riffs gradually blurring, until these tracks are transformed into something much more woozy and psychedelic, heavy and heady. Thankfully, the vocals are way down in the mix, so while their presence does indeed further the black metal vibe, they gradually blend into the background, becoming just another layer of sound, woven into Horseback's thick undulating blackened buzzscape. And it's not until the final track, a brief 3 minute outro, that the buzz and howl are peeled back, leaving a gorgeously hazy bit of soft focus shimmer to finish things off. Quite gorgeous, and in its own way, a pretty perfect companion to Impale Golden Horn. Needless to say, absolutely recommended...
It's tough to argue with this one. Two recent aQ Record Of The Week-ers, Chicago blackened doom-drone-metal trio Locrian, teamed up with one man psychedelic-black-drone outfit Horseback, for two tracks of brooding, smoldering, blackened psychedelia, the perfect fusion of the two sounds into something darkly mysterious and hauntingly beautiful.
The shorter opening track, "The Gift", definitely sounds like it could be either band, and most definitely sounds like a hybrid of the two, hazy blurred ambience, haunting melodies, deep rumbling shimmer, a sort of gauzy post industrial black ambient drift, streaks of high end hovering over soft slow whirls and strange bits of clatter, laced with what sounds like someone playing the inside of a piano, buzzing metallic strums way down in the mix, beneath heaving groaning slabs of low end, billowing clouds of washed out thrum, distant drums, some harsh vokills, a slow build, with everything fading out EXCEPT the drums, which just get louder and more powerful, leading directly into the nearly 14 minute "Our Epitaph" which sounds fantastically like neither. At least on the surface. After a brief flurry of tolling bells, the song unwinds like a gloomy pop song, all fuzzy low end synth buzz, shuffling minimal drumming, all wreathed in swirling streaks of dreamlike haze, and wrapped around a darkly hypnotic main melody, and then there are the vocals, a softly distorted croon, wreathed in reverb, the result is pretty fantastic, sounding almost like an Interpol B-side or some lost live Joy Division track, spinning at 16rpm, but way more abstract and washed out and blackly psychedelic. Over the course of the track, the surrounding sounds grow more and more intense, an ever expanding squall of swirling high end and blurred and smeared melodic tangles, but that rhythm, and that relentless dirge stay locked solid, totally mesmerizing, a gorgeously trancelike chunk of noise-drenched blackened krautpsych that while obviously essential for Utech obsessives, and lovers of all things dark and droney, heavy and haunting, it's also just melodic enough to maybe lure some dabblers over to the dark sonic side for good�
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Features super striking artwork from longtime collaborator artist Denis Forkas Kostromitin, who also did the etching on the B-side, and on the printed insert.
A few lists back we reviewed a 12" collaboration between blackened metallic dronelord Horseback, and blackdoomdrone duo (and sometimes trio) Locrian, which was a gorgeous slab of black drone heaviness, fusing the power of both groups. Here, in a sort of sonic coda, each group goes it alone.
Horseback unfurl a hazy droned out raga, the track centered around a glorious high end drone, all shimmer and reverberation, the sound sun dappled and gloriously effulgent, very much like Sunroof!, mesmerizing and dreamlike, to which HB adds, some twisted gnarled vocals, all hissy and demonic, wreathing the whole thing in little melodic tendrils, the sound blissed out and gauzy, the blackness seemingly held at bay by this shining sonic light, the sort of track that is WAY too short on a 7", we could listen to stuff like this forEVER.
Locrian counter with something much more dark and grim, a churning bit of blurred tarpit riffage, a dirgey bit of SUNNO))) like thrum, but that low end creep is soon swaddled in delicate crystalline melodies, and thick hazy streaks of high end shimmer, that weird doomy dirge immediately transformed into something more dreamlike and ethereal. Vocals drift in, deep liturgical chanting, draped over the dirgey riffage and swaddled in the chiming melodies, the sound seeming to grow ever hazier and more ephemeral before fading out completely.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
We won't go into too much detail about this, as it's limited to just 200 copies, we got about 15, and can NOT get any more once they're gone, so if you want one, stop reading now and ADD TO CART! But if you're feeling daring, and are curious for a little more into, read on to find out more about this limited tape.
Two of the names will no doubt be familiar to most readers of the aQ list, blackened drone outfit Horseback, whose sound recently has shifted more toward a rhythmic post rock a la Skull Defekts, and of course, the unpronounceable Njiqahdda, whose twisted strain of (un) black metal we've been big fans of for a while now. Also included are Venowl and Cara Neir, both new to us, more on them in a second. Up first though are Horseback, whose sound continues to evolve, moving further away from the murky drone and black buzz of their early records, and sounds like it could have come right off of their Half Blood record. Rhythmic and hypnotic, bass and drum locked into a sort of hypnorock groove, laced with fluttering flutes, weird electronics, swirling shimmering melodies, when the guitar comes in, it's sort of washed out and droney, giving the track an almost Earth-like vive, the overall sound is like a super cyclical krautrock styled minimalism, with an epic second half, replete with those shrieked black metal vox. Great stuff, and definitely worth the price of admission all on its own. Njiqahdda fill up the rest of the A side with an epic multipart jam, that slips easily from softly psychedelic and melodic, all clean guitars and shimmering ambience, to churning intricate mathmetal, to doomic sludgey heaviness, to wildly convoluted progged out blackness and back again, with some cool (and surprising) clean vocals, the sound majestic and heavy as hell, and seriously epic.
Venowl start things off on the B side, offering up a stumbling super lo-fi doom/sludge sprawl, creeping and woozy, laced with anguished vocals (that slip into that weird sort of oinking pig vox, which here are terrifying), chaotic and in-the-red, total rehearsal space sound, but it suits their crusty creep, the drumming impossibly damaged and totally off kilter, the whole thing sounding on the verge of constant collapse, so super fractured and fucked up, like a sludge metal version of Dead Reptile Shrine, or Circle Of Ouroborus, which is definitely a good thing. Finally, Cara Neir finish things off with three short-ish tracks of blasting black metal, the sound appropriately brittle and buzzy, but weirdly melodic, the fast picked guitar unfurling some surprising catchiness throughout, at least on the first track, the other two tracks are much more grim, and dense and mathy, the sound gradually revealing itself as not your typical black metal, with all sorts of weird shit going on within their black buzz. Awesome stuff.
Again, this is LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! and we only have a handful, so act fast if you want one.
We've long been fans of Horseback (aka Jenks Miller), whose sound has gradually developed from blissed out dronescapery, to full on blasting post rock flecked black metal, to... well, to this (more on that in a second). We've also long been fans of pretty much anything Matthew Bower related, Total, Skullflower, Sunroof!, Hototogisu, and of course Voltigeurs. And while these two may not seem like the most obvious match up, their sounds are surprisingly complimentary.
Horseback offer up two tracks, of what we can only call black prog. Buzzing guitars, pounding drums, harsh hellish vokills, and lots of ELP style organs, which transforms the sound into something way weirder, and frankly way cooler. The organs swirl and pulse and buzz over murky drum pound and those blackened shrieks, the black element sounds slowed down, like some bizarre mash up of Burzum at 16rpm and ELP at 33, the keyboards make the sound more psychedelic and spacey, and fuse perfectly into a gloriously twisted hybrid, one that is peppered with squalls of freaked out psychedelic noise, and culminates in a gorgeous Burzumic outro, all blown out drone riffage and buried anguished howls, mesmerizing and mysterious.
The second track is soaring and epic and a little blackened, but sounds more static, more like a sort of Sunroof!-style ur-drone, draped over blasting beats nearly lost in the churn and swirl, harsh vox here too, the overall sound extra distorted, glimmery and glistening and downtuned and crumbling, as if the signal is way too hot for the speakers, which makes it sound noisier for sure, but also mesmerizingly psychedelic.
Voltigeurs, which is Matthew Bower and cellist Samantha Davies, finds the duo doing what they do best, stirring up huge clouds of washed out white noise skree, a blindingly brilliant tangle of dense guitar freakage and whirling steel string buzz, a solar flare sprawl of amp melting, ear shredding psychedelic heaviness, that like other Voltigeurs recordings, offers very little to the casual listener, but beneath the barrage of howl and crunch and skree, lurk an ever shifting field of riffage and melody, buried song structures only visible occasionally, these glimpses coloring the cloud of noise that surrounds them, turning the whole thing into a surprisingly listenable blast of psychnoisebliss.
VERY VERY LIMITED! And an expensive import. We have about 10 copies, not sure we'll be able to get any more after that.
It's frustrating how long it takes us sometimes to get around to reviewing stuff, especially when it's something we've had for a while and have been digging a lot. Such is the case with the strangely named Horseflesh, a one man band from right here in SF, who weaves some alchemical musical magic that sounds a little like a cross between�Wolf Eyes and Expo 70, which is not a bad thing at all. Long tracks that are equal parts seventies space kraut, spare industrial ambience, and guitar based free noise dronemusic...
Opening with some�murky minimal folk, with simple looped acoustic guitar figures, strange rattling percussion, all wreathed in a fuzzy smokey ambience�eventually growing more and more droney and subtly blurred as the track progresses. The disc slowly mutates, each track setting up the next,�warm smears of soft edged distortion draped over barely there guitar curlicues, shimmering resonant thrum, and streaks of muted feedback. A super reverbed soundscape of delayed scrape and grind, all washed out, looped metallic shimmer, that gives way to a lugubrious low end drift, all fluttering harmonics, distant melodies, muffled percussive chimes, and gradually become more and more distorted and becomes a dense Fenneszian buzz,�a crunchy slow motion abstract doom, a plodding downtuned riff, pulled into long low strips strewn�over the top of drunkenly keening jagged melodies that swoon and warble. A grinding hissy harsh landscape of stumbling percussion and processed guitar whir, swirling chaotic space FX and rumbling reverberant drones, like some noise band set up and performing in the crashing surf of some alien sea... The closer is a gorgeous lilting folky prog jam, with fluttering flutes, steel string guitars, summery melodies, that becomes less and less cohesive as the track progresses, the instruments dropping off one by one, until all that is left is a dreamy drifting super high end melody, a soft shimmer of feedback sculpted into something ethereal and lovely...
Packaged in cool hand screened chip board sleeves, with a photocopies insert.�
Brand new disc from local kraut-drone dreamweavers Horseflesh, who in our review of their last record we compared to a cross between Expo 70 and Wolf Eyes, which is not so much the case anymore. They're still drone-y and dreamy, but here, the sound has been pushed even farther out, and from the opening few minutes alone, you know you're in for something different, a gurgling low end shimmer builds in pitch and intensity, faster and faster and louder and louder, until the band locks into a high end Ur-drone, a symphony of synthesized skree, Sunroof! set to stun, difficult and dense, bordering on full on noise, but handled so deftly, we almost don't want it to end. Thankfully, instead of ending, it just sort of changes, the high end drops out leaving a strange pulsing dynamic sea of synth notes, chords, whirring buzzy warbly throbs, creating a strange staggered rhythm, haunting and off kilter, but strangely arresting too, unlike almost anything we've heard but we dig it. This constantly shifting sonic field is anything but ambient, synths and guitars fade in and fade out, reverberating metallic shimmer becomes grinding industrial crunch, warm muted tones become a burbling sea of fragmented melody, it all sort of builds and intensifies into a churning doomdrone finale, dense and effulgent, and strangely majestic. Most bands would probably hang it up there and call it a day, but we're not even 1/3 of the way through yet.
The second track is much more spacious, the high clarion tones clear and resonant, ringing out like car horns and fog horns, the long notes beating against each other, occasionally slipping into strange distorted crunch, but slipping just as effortlessly back into swirling tendrils of warble and whir, the track continues to get more and more dense, the synths more and more like horns, more dissonant, the notes more rapid and closer together, resembling some sped up Hermann Nitsch piece or some other droning atonal chunk of modern classical.
The final track is much more melodic, at least in the beginning, deep washed out blissy tones wreathed in crumbling warm fuzz, the fuzz quickly dissipating, leaving another strange sea of almost chiming upper register tones, their color slowly shifting from whites and yellows and reds, to greys and browns and blacks, growing more ominous and more darkly clouded by the second, the layers peeling back one at a time, eventually leaving a single tone, that drifts and warbles and shimmers and whirs finally fades out completely.
Not nearly as krautrocky or dreamily drone-y as the last Horseflesh, but it would have been too easy to just make another same sounding record. Synthenesia is a much wilder collection of sounds, much more intense and inventive, challenging and difficult, and ultimately, because of that, even more magical and mysterious.
These cd-rs are packaged in super striking handscreened digipaks, with a printed cardstock insert and a sticker.
Two of our favorite local bands team up for some serious noisemaking. Horseflesh usually traffic in longform dronescapes and epic post industrial kraut drone, while Borneo specialize in a sort of pop infused heaviness, that we described as Harvey Milk or Jesu covering Lync or Seam or even Codeine. So the question is not necessarily why these guys decided to get together, the real question is what happened when they did. And Courage Rock is the answer.
A twisted post rock hybrid, not in the sense of post rock the genre, but rather POST-rock, beyond rock, beyond even post rock, the opening salvo finds the Borneo duo unfurling thick, repetitive anti-grooves, thick chugging metallic riffage, pounding motorik thumps, while Horseflesh bathes the whole thing is thick swaths of tripped out kosmische effects, streaks of white noise, layers upon layers of hiss and buzz and crunch, tossing in the occasional squall of bleeps and bloops and swoops. As the record continues, Borneo dial it back a little contributing some more minimal pulse like rhythmic minimalism, while the guitars rumble and buzz, and Horseflesh keeps things thick and murky and spaced out.
Elsewhere, full on bursts of white noise give way to hazy sun baked riffage, a doomy crawl, almost like Earth, wrapped in a speaker rattling undercurrent of tectonic rumbles, long stretches of layered haze wrapped around incendiary feedback, that pulse like thump holding it together, a gloriously noise flecked spaced out druggy drift, rife with stuttery loops, shards of FX and buried melodies, crushing downtuned doomy sludge, almost stonery, with heavy Neanderthal drumming, and woozy minor key guitars, pounding through a cloud of black fuzz and twisted effects, a seriously fierce psych-drone blowout, so good that it makes us almost think these guys should ALWAYS play together...
SUPER LIMITED, in hand painted and hand assembled packaging....
