HOPKINS, CLUTCHY Music Is My Medicine (Ubiquity) cd 16.98
The funky desert cave nomad is back again! And apparently he's been listening to a lot of Augustus Pablo and Jackie Mittoo too, because Music Is My Medicine is inflected with all kinds of dub and reggae vibes. Echoey bass, melodica, flutes and sunny rhythms, but not in a heavy-handed way that would interrupt the natural flow of Hopkins soul jazz style. Obviously music is not Clutchy Hopkins' only medicine. This is a stone groove!
MPEG Stream: "The Old Spot"
MPEG Stream: "Cold and Wet"
MPEG Stream: "Tune Traveler"

HOPKINS, CLUTCHY Walking Sdrawkcab (Ubiquity) lp 22.00
Last list we featured a release by the mysterious Clutchy Hopkins, a hippie recluse who was the son of a Motown engineer, and who recorded these amazing instrumental jazz funk tracks sometime in the eighties or early nineties and then disappeared. Rumors have been circulating that this was actually an alias for DJ Shadow or Cut Chemist, as like Bigfoot, only a few people claim to have seen Clutchy Hopkins.
Well, Ubiquity, has released another batch of Clutchy tracks along with a dvd with clips from an unreleased documentary about this mysterious figure. Of course this does little to shed any light on whether this is fact or fiction or a little bit of both. According to the dvd, the tapes were found with a bunch of homemade and middle eastern instruments by a junk collector in Hawthorne, CA. The homemade instruments including a really cool flute wired up to a wah device, a modified electric kalimba, and a mini-electric organ were kept by the collector while the tapes were sold to a friend. Supposedly there were enough tapes to release ten albums, and they were shopped around to various places, and two full albums (including this one) were released. The rest of the tapes were allegedly stolen back and hidden by the junk collector who is now in prison somewhere in Southern California. Other testimonials come from a masked Mexican record collector who fought over the same record, a hippie lady in Venice Beach who lived with Clutchy for three months before he disappeared and a Seattle record store who has some grainy footage of someone believed to be Clutchy shopping. Meanwhile we learn from these testimonials that Clutchy was not only an amazing multi-instrumentalist, but an artist, visionary architect and spiritual philosopher as well. On paper, it sounds so absolutely far-fetched, yet most of the folks on the dvd actually seem quite genuine. So we're really confused. But like the last review, we're gonna stick with our gut and just wholeheartedly buy into this. Why, because the music is awesome for one, and this release also shines a light on another soul obscurity, Darondo, who guest vocals on a track. Whether Darondo recorded the song with Clutchy or was added in later is still a mystery, they didn't include him in the interviews. Recommended!
NB. the dvd portions of this review don't apply to the vinyl format...
MPEG Stream: "Sound Of The Ghost"
MPEG Stream: "Love Of A Woman (feat. Darondo)"
MPEG Stream: "Para Los Ninos"

HOPKINS, CLUTCHY Walking Sdrawkcab (Ubiquity) cd+dvd 16.98
Last list we featured a release by the mysterious Clutchy Hopkins, a hippie recluse who was the son of a Motown engineer, and who recorded these amazing instrumental jazz funk tracks sometime in the eighties or early nineties and then disappeared. Rumors have been circulating that this was actually an alias for DJ Shadow or Cut Chemist, as like Bigfoot, only a few people claim to have seen Clutchy Hopkins.
Well, Ubiquity, has released another batch of Clutchy tracks along with a dvd with clips from an unreleased documentary about this mysterious figure. Of course this does little to shed any light on whether this is fact or fiction or a little bit of both. According to the dvd, the tapes were found with a bunch of homemade and middle eastern instruments by a junk collector in Hawthorne, CA. The homemade instruments including a really cool flute wired up to a wah device, a modified electric kalimba, and a mini-electric organ were kept by the collector while the tapes were sold to a friend. Supposedly there were enough tapes to release ten albums, and they were shopped around to various places, and two full albums (including this one) were released. The rest of the tapes were allegedly stolen back and hidden by the junk collector who is now in prison somewhere in Southern California. Other testimonials come from a masked Mexican record collector who fought over the same record, a hippie lady in Venice Beach who lived with Clutchy for three months before he disappeared and a Seattle record store who has some grainy footage of someone believed to be Clutchy shopping. Meanwhile we learn from these testimonials that Clutchy was not only an amazing multi-instrumentalist, but an artist, visionary architect and spiritual philosopher as well. On paper, it sounds so absolutely far-fetched, yet most of the folks on the dvd actually seem quite genuine. So we're really confused. But like the last review, we're gonna stick with our gut and just wholeheartedly buy into this. Why, because the music is awesome for one, and this release also shines a light on another soul obscurity, Darondo, who guest vocals on a track. Whether Darondo recorded the song with Clutchy or was added in later is still a mystery, they didn't include him in the interviews. Recommended!
NB. the dvd portions of this review don't apply to the vinyl format...
MPEG Stream: "Sound Of The Ghost"
MPEG Stream: "Love Of A Woman (feat. Darondo)"
MPEG Stream: "Para Los Ninos"

HOPKINS, J.C. Athens By Night (Stickshift) cd 12.98
Local all-around nice guy's WONDERFUL new album of impossibly lush pop songs that remind us of Chris Bell and Big Star, yes they're that good and that touching. With the added talents of Barbara Manning, Melanie Clarin, and Greg Freeman.

HOPKINS, J.C. Athens By Night (Stickshift) lp 10.98
Local all-around nice guy's WONDERFUL new album of impossibly lush pop songs that remind us of Chris Bell and Big Star, yes they're that good and that touching. With the added talents of Barbara Manning, Melanie Clarin, and Greg Freeman.

HOPKINS, JON Insides (Domino) cd 15.98

HOPPER, KEV Whispering Foils (Drag City) cd 14.98
Join Kev Hopper (former bassist of Stump) on his third album as he meanders down a gently winding path festooned with pretty marimbas, vibes, and musical saw. Textured percussion and strings weave their way. At times diaphanous and shimmering, and at others shadowy and mysterious. Hopper (who has played on albums by High Llamas and Stereolab) is accompanied on his journey by Charles Hayward (This Heat) and Sean O'Hagan (High Llamas).

HORA FLORA / OZMADAWN split (Chambara) cassette 3.98

HORAFLORA Gland Canyon (Install Records) cd-r 8.98
Bay Area sound artist Raub Roy goes by the name of Horaflora; and his performances are really impressive exercises in controlled electro-acoustic chaos, with low-tech electronics skittering above various tactile scrapes counterpointed by reversed currents of placid bass frequencies and tonal undulation. One of his best performance stunts is to fill up large balloons, shove a trumpet mouthpiece inside the balloon, and drop the metal mouthpiece on a large drumhead. With two of these devices going, Horaflora can generate prolonged vibration and acoustically phased drones that are really amazing.
Gland Canyon is a small run edition released by Instal Records (which had released a Caretaker disc a while back, although this shares little aesthetic similarity), and works through many of the clamorous, decomposing sounds that Horaflora generates in a live setting. It can't be qualified as 'noise' as these collages are more in keeping with a tradition of automatic writing through sound, with idiosyncratic juxtapositions of electronic bloops, ring modulated flanges, minuscule clatter of wood and metal, mad-scientist weirdo percolations, and those sublimated balloon drones. As such it's more in keeping with some of the HNAS collages or something deconstructed from Small Cruel Party and old P.16.D4 tapes. The various tracks ebb and flow with an unhurried pace that slowly magnifies some of the many sounds into more sparse hypno-repetitive passages and then sweep everything into rather dense crescendos of scattershot sediment. Limited to 100 copies.
MPEG Stream: "oRFLooRE"
MPEG Stream: "Goargalor Fantasy '54"

HORAFLORA / SECRET BOYFRIEND split (Hot Releases) lp 11.98
San Francisco's Raub Roy (aka Horaflora) met Ryan Martin (aka Secret Boyfriend), during an ambitious Horaflora tour in 2008, whereby he biked from Georgia to Maine, playing his unique brand of acoustic noise along the way with just what he could carry and what he could scrape together at each show. Martin hosted one of these shows in his hometown of Carrboro, NC; being impressed by the performance, he offered Roy a split release on his own Hot Releases imprint. While it would have been cool to have a document from the Horaflora bike tour, this is a damn fine split release of nocturnal murk linking the two projects. The Horaflora side is actually a recording of a live radio broadcast at KALX in Berkeley, with Roy being accompanied by Andrea Williams. One of Roy's best tricks - expanded balloons expelling their innards across drum heads and metal surfaces - is on display here; and it's great to hear the variety of these blustery elongated textures in an audio environment when it has been such a great visual aspect to his live performances. Amidst these sounds, Roy and Williams interweave acoustic noise-junk textures from found metal, tin cans, and hypercompressed recordings from hand-held tape decks, spluttering towards a dense climax of floor rattling low end and aerated acoustic noise.
The Secret Boyfriend side opens with a meandering set of Roy Montgomery styled noise-drone guitar melodies collapsing into a murky spectral-decay wash of no-fi shoegazing. Fuzzy piano tones begin to emerge as graceful calliope like melodies, still hung with enough grit and cobwebs to make these sound haunted. All of this comes to an end with a menacing burst of noise grafted upon a cheap synth melody that tone bends from the depths of cavernous cistern, but the noise begets a couple of darkened mope-folk tunes of just acoustic guitar and voice buried in echoplex.
300 copies and that's it for this great split!

HORDE CATALYTIQUE POUR LA FIN Gestation So`nore (Mellow) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Quiet/loud saxophone squealing and squawking, over a background ambience of ominous clatter and drone...piano, percussion, tape hiss...
Free jazz fairy tale music from France circa 1971. It's very moody and dark, but then there will be eruptions of Warner Bros cartoon music, almost. You could imagine a cartoon mouse tip-toeing around to some of this. A very scared little mouse. This ultra-rare Futura LP now sees cd reissue via Italian label Mellow, and fans of skronky Euro-improv as well as the more cosmic psych soundscapes of, say, Taj Mahal Travellers, should investigate.
RealAudio clip: "Gestation Sonore 4"

HORDE OF HEL Blodskam (Moribund) cd 15.98
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.
MPEG Stream: "Leave Life Behind"
MPEG Stream: "Born Again Into Submission"
MPEG Stream: "Hail To Chaos"

HORDE OF HEL Blodskam II (Moribund Cult) cd 15.98
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....
MPEG Stream: "Army Of Wolves"
MPEG Stream: "Blood Of My Father"
MPEG Stream: "Hordepower"

HORDES OF SATAN s/t (Streaks) lp 12.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
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!!

HORISONT Second Assault (Metal Blade / Rise Above) cd 14.98
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.
MPEG Stream: "Second Assault"
MPEG Stream: "On The Run"
MPEG Stream: "Thunderflight"

HORISONT Tva Sidor Av Horisonten (Crusher) cd 14.98
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.
MPEG Stream: "Nightrider"
MPEG Stream: "Just Ain't Right"
MPEG Stream: "Efter Min Pipa"

HORISONT Tva Sidor Av Horisonten (Crusher) lp 17.98
NOW HERE ON VINYL!
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 and lp by Horisont. 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.
MPEG Stream: "Nightrider"
MPEG Stream: "Just Ain't Right"
MPEG Stream: "Efter Min Pipa"

HORN OF DAGOTH Rehearsal Demo II 2007 (self-released) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Yay, managed to get a few more of these... here's our review from when we first listed it a few months ago: 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!
MPEG Stream: "Impotent God Of Jealousy"
MPEG Stream: "Festooned With Snakes & Bereavement"
MPEG Stream: "Thunder Of Hoof & Steel"

HORN OF DAGOTH Rehearsals 2005 (self-released) cd-r 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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!
MPEG Stream: "Impotent God Of Jealousy"
MPEG Stream: "Sign Of The Mark"

HORNA Aania Yossa (Moribund) cd 14.98
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.
MPEG Stream: "Raiskattu Saastaisessa Valossa"
MPEG Stream: "Noutajan Kutsu"

HORNA Musta Kaipuu (Moribund) cd 14.98
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.
MPEG Stream: "Piina"
MPEG Stream: "Haudanvarjo"
MPEG Stream: "Aldebaranin"

HORNA Pimeyden Hehku (Moribund Records) cd 12.98

HORNA Sanojesi Aarelle (Moribund) 2cd 17.98
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...
MPEG Stream: "Muinaisten Alttarilta"
MPEG Stream: "Verilehto"
MPEG Stream: "Mustan Kirkkauden Sarastus"

HORNA Sotahuuto (Grievantee) cd 13.98
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.
MPEG Stream: "Lahtolaukaus"
MPEG Stream: "Vapise, Vapahtaja"
MPEG Stream: "Verimalja"

HORNA / MUSTA SURMA Vihan Vuodet (Moribund) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: HORNA "Noidanloitsu"
MPEG Stream: MUSTA SURMA "Kuolonmyrsky"

HORNA / PESTE NOIRE split (Debemur Morti) 7" 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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 dollarÉ
Super thick vinyl, thick cardstock inner sleeves, and a super striking woodcut style outer jacket.

HORNORKESTERET Fjaer Og Jern (Panot Audio Forlog) cd 15.98
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.
MPEG Stream: "Elegi For Roald Amundsen"
MPEG Stream: "Morgenstimmung Am Nebelsee"
MPEG Stream: "Horny Guru"
MPEG Stream: "Hvalrossjakt"
MPEG Stream: "Barrieren"

HORNS Horns, Halos & Mobile Phones (Conspiracy) lp 18.98
We discovered a little stash of these long out of print Conspiracy lps, we have between 5 and 10 of each left, and they're all sale priced, WAY cheaper than they were when we listen them a while back. So act fast, cuz these will be gone pretty dang quick, and obviously, once we run out that's it.
We pretty much blew through the rest of the super limited Conspiracy Records anniversary limited lps we reviewed last list, but we still have a handful of these left and they are KILLER! Read on...
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.

HORRID RED Celestial Joy (Brave Mysteries) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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 propulsiveness 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 Celestial Joy (Domestic) (Terrible Records) lp 11.98
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 Celestial Joy (Import) (Holidays Records) lp 17.98
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 Empty Lungs (Holidays) lp 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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!

HORRID RED Pink Flowers (Soft Abuse) 7" 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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.

HORRID RED Silent Party (Soft Abuse) 7" 9.98
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.

HORRID RED Silent Party (Soft Abuse) cassette 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
NOW ON CASSETTE WITH ADDITIONAL MATERIAL!!! 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.
"Marble Staircase" and "Parts I & II" are less immediate but showcase their ability to create a downer atmosphere with such success. And, another 20 minutes of material is included on the tape, not found on the original single!

HORRORS, THE s/t (In The Red) cd 13.98
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!"
RealAudio clip: "Every Inch Of My Love"
RealAudio clip: "I Don't Need A Woman I Need A Nurse"
RealAudio clip: "Hurt That Bird"

HORRORS, THE s/t (Stolen Transmission / Polydor) cd ep 5.98
Good haircuts + garage rock + good times = The Horrors! This equation might be particularly accurate if you dig sculpted black hair, skinny London lads and trashy garage rawk with wheezy farfisa-y organ. This self-titled cdep is just a short intro to The Horrors (not to be confused with The Horrors from Iowa -- guess they're gonna have to duke it out, eh?), but it's enough to get your feet wet in these pouty stylin' kids' sweaty party puddle. It consists of five feisty songs (including an obligatory cover of garage classic Screaming Lord Sutch's "Jack The Ripper") plus a killer video for "Sheena Is A Parasite" directed by none other than Chris Cunningham!!! His first video in 6 years! The song is a snarling blast of blown out garage fuzz Fall worship, but the video! Holy cow! Banned from MTV and it's easy to see why. A sweaty, obviously distressed Samantha Morton (Oscar nominated actress Samantha Morton, that is) lifts her skirt during each chorus allowing a blurred mass of tentacled parasites to shoot out at the camera. Euuuwww. Probably a super blast live.
MPEG Stream: "Death At The Chapel"
MPEG Stream: "Jack The Ripper"

HORRORS, THE Vent (In the Red) cd 13.98
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 Stream: "Karen"
MPEG Stream: "When I Get Home"

HORRORS, THE / SUICIDE / NIC VOID Shadazz / Radiation / Rocket U.S.A. (Blast First Petite) 10" 15.98

HORRORS, THE / SUICIDE / NIC VOID Shadazz / Radiation / Rocket U.S.A. (Blast First Petite) 10" 15.98

HORSCROFT, SCOTT 8 Guitars (Quecksilber) cd 16.98

HORSE OF COURSE s/t (self-released) cd 10.98

MPEG Stream: "In A Kitchen Of Convicts, Pt. 1"
MPEG Stream: "Aisles Of Lost Files"
MPEG Stream: "Dead And Gone"

HORSE THE BAND Natural Death (Koch) cd 14.98

HORSE THE BAND Pizza (Koch) cd 9.98

MPEG Stream: "Anti-Pizza"
MPEG Stream: "Crippled By Pizza (Pizzarrhea In The Pizzaria)"

HORSE THE BAND R. Borlax (Pluto) cd 14.98
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 angular 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!
MPEG Stream: "Seven Tentacles And Eight Flames"
MPEG Stream: "Cutsman"

HORSE THE BAND The Mechanical Hand (Combat Records) cd 13.98
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...
MPEG Stream: "Birdo"
MPEG Stream: "A Million Exploding Suns"

HORSEBACK Half Blood (Relapse) cd 14.98
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.
MPEG Stream: "Mithras"
MPEG Stream: "Hallucigenia III - The Emerald Tablet"

HORSEBACK Half Blood (Relapse) lp 19.98
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.
MPEG Stream: "Mithras"
MPEG Stream: "Hallucigenia III - The Emerald Tablet"

HORSEBACK Impale Golden Horn (Burly Time) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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...
MPEG Stream: "Finale"
MPEG Stream: "The Golden Horn"

HORSEBACK Impale Golden Horn (Divide By Zero / Three Lobed) lp 17.98
NOW ON LP!!! Here's what we said way back when we first encountered this on cd, in 2007:
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...
MPEG Stream: "Finale"
MPEG Stream: "The Golden Horn"