| CD REVIEW Horse The Band |
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Band : Horse The Band Ooh man, I lóóve these guys! What a deliciously wacky sound they have! Thanks to the inclusion into their Hardcore of retro '80s Electro sounds and some Gameboy noises to boot (the keyboarder has incorporated a Game Boy cartridgetoemulatethe 8-bit video game-influenced sound), the boys soon described their music quite uniquely as "NintendoCore" (also because in some of their early songs the lyrical topics were based on various game characters). Now, if what you've read until now sounds somewhat weird to you, why don't you just stop reading right now, and look up another album review, eh? Because I found out that HtB have previous releases to this one, and I intend to be able to get 'em all! Nah...just kiddin'...but not about the part of goin' to get the other albums, because the more eclectic music lovers among us are boùnd to fall in love with this crazy bunch of people who've taken up residence in Los Angeles. I ain't sure when exactly the band formed, but they first made their presence felt in 2000 with the release of their Scabies, The Kangarooster, And You demo, issuing that material a year later on the self-released album Secret Rhythms Of The Universe (copies of which are now almost impossible to find). That same year the boys also brought us the I Am A Small Wooden Statue On A Patch Of Crabgrass Next To A Dried Up Riverbed EP, regretably only on a 300 copy rotation! In 2002 another demo session entitled Beautiful Songs By Men followed, and in 2003 (following the band's show of strong work ethics by self-booking their extensive tours since Summer 2002), Pluto Records issued the band's official debut album R. Borlax. At that time the band line-up comprised singer Nathan Winneke, guitarist David Isen, keyboardist Erik Engstrom, and drummer Jason Karuza. Sophomore album The Mechanical Hand followed in 2005 (through Combat) featuring a new rhythm section with bassist DashiellHanArkenstone and drummer Eli Green, the latter replaced that same year by Chris Prophet. Throughout 2006 HtB toured with a wide array of artists. Starting off with Criteria, Poison The Well, and The Fall Of Troy during April, allied with Forgive Durden, Gatsby's American Dream, Portugal, and The Man for a tour during May...but dropped of, so-called becaus ethey had come across the best pizzas they'd ever eaten in Chicago...and then jumped onto the Warped Tour as well as the Sounds Of The Underground Tour. In between they found time to record their 5-track EP Pizza, and played additional shows with Gwar. The EP was released in September by Koch Records (who had taken over Combat). During the Fall, the band toured the US and Canada with All That Remains and Dragonforce. While passing through Toronto, singer Nathan lives a bewildering adventure when he's arrested on suspicion of having robbed a gas station and shooting a pistol at some woman. The tour finished, the quintet secluded itself in its rehearsal space to write the songs for a new full-length album, but in December of that same year they already posted the specially recorded song "A Partridge" (a comical spin of the popular Christmas song "The 12 Days On Christmas") on their MySpace page. Recordings for A Natural Death started in February 2007, at which time the guys also started a display on the progress of the recording process on YouTube...which was soon turned into a forum for the band to post episodes of its own drama series Lawrence And Friends, a "show" about a love triangle between a postcard of Carla Hassett, a sugar cube, and a suicidal pencil. The guys even composed a theme song for the show in their synthesizer sound. On May 15, the entire album was leaked on the Internet, something which would have it's affect on the band later. In the first place, the original release date of June 26 was postponed to late August...which makes it about time to chat about thàt for a while, right? Opening track "Hyperborea" opens with the same sounds of howling winds as closing track "Lif", which enables the listener to put the album in a loop and listen to it continuously...which is exactly what the band intended with that. According to the keyboard player, the album is about the futility and arrogance of creation and destruction, the overwhelming scale of space and time, and the brutal malesty of nature, the horror of birth and the beauty of death. As everyone will die some day to be forgotten afterwards, the album serves as a warning to humanity to stop taking itself so seriously. With no less than 16 tracks for a near 56-minute listening session, some of the tracks differ from the usual NintendoCore (which can be seen as influenced by the likes of Converge, Dillinger Escape Plan, and Norma Jean, but definitely giving a wacky Electro twist to Punk, Hardcore and Mathcore) antics. To start with, you've got "The Beach", which is nothing more than seashore sounds in the background with a woman (girl?) whimpering in the front for about 67 seconds. The 67-second "Crickets" is a somewhat similar experiment in sound, but this time the cricket sounds are overlain with an atmospheric keyboard and some spoken word "poetry", giving the track an arty touch. With "Sex Raptor" the guys turn the clock back completely to the beginnings of the Eighties with a keyboard-driven Dance Pop song which could've been written and recorded in that era (and made a relatively big hit for anyone who would've released it in those days)! That girl returns in "His Purple Majesty", where she actually gets to speak two short sentences, twice. "Kangarooster Meadows" is again a keyboard-driven song, but of a different kind than before all together, somewhat sillier in fact, and with the addition of some very deep voice as well. The overall calmer "Rolling Horse" even has a passage with a very classically influenced keyboard it it, for once sounding as an organ. Finally, album closing near-instrumental "Lif" incorporates sound samples taken from a radio conversation in space, amongst other stuff...before the instruments kick in softly for a somewhat repetitive tune in which some more samples appear alongside a short daemonic whaling (or how else should I describe that weard vocal sound used?). Actually, if you've had the courage to read on until now, you're more than deservant to be one of my competitors in the search for audio material from this band. Still, maybe you'd better surf to myspace.com/horsetheband first to listen to some material by the band. The boys also posted a couple (11 in total, actually) for you to watch...so enjoy! Going back to HtB history (because the original release of the album IS a year ago!!), drummer Chris Prophet left the band in February of this year. The guys swiftly hired Jon Karel from The Number 12 Looks Like You for the dirty work during the Earth Tour which the band again booked on their own in a reaction to the little support they've had from the label so far (and the whole music business in general). Starting in March, the boys already went "Down Under" to Australia and New Zealand, found some 10 % of the originally scheduled shows cancelled, and played quite a few shows for free, without any compensation. I'm sure more money was made on the Van's Warped tour in the US the guys jumped on in June (after hearing that Koch Records, exercising its contractual prerogatives, had sacked the band, citing the desire to cut "unprofitable" artists acuired during the take-over of Combat Records), and the same certainly goes for the upcoming European Taste Of Chaos tour (the bill of which also includes As I Lay Dying, Atreyu, Mucc, and Story Of The Year) in October (dates posted in the blogs of the band's MySpace...Belgians hurry down to Antwerp's Hof Ter Lo on Oct. 13). By the way, in July the band announced that they had taken on a new drummer in Bleeding Kansas' Daniel Pouliot, a longtime friend who goes back to the beginning of the band! Plans for the immediate future of the band include continuing to plan upcoming tours by themselves, writing a new album during Winter, recording it during Spring, and tour in the Summer in support of the album as it is released. Well, I'm sure that with the help of Ferret Music, things will get along just dandily! At least, I dó hope the label hasn't simply bought up the rights for the A Natural Death album, but also signed the band for upcoming albums!!! Well, the end conclusion is I love this album, and would I have heard it when it came out the first time I would've been able to put it in my year-lists of 2007. Can't do that now, can I? Still, top rating, maties, top rating! 98/100 Tony. |