HORSE the band – Desperate Living
HORSE the band – Desperate Living CD (Hassle/Vagrant)
At this point, I think that either you know all about (and possibly adore) HORSE the band, or you’ve never heard of ‘em and probably wouldn’t ‘get it’ anyway—all of which is a shame, because I’d love to see this band eat the mainstream alive. ‘Desperate Living’ is probably the band’s most accessible record, though I urge you to take that comment with a grain of salt because there is nothing truly accessible about it. There aren’t really any bass-drone noisescapes present here, and the songs are more cohesively structured than in the past; but these insane geniuses still manage to veer from Dillinger Escape Plan style insanity into Swans style noise assaults into beautiful melodic atmospherics into big-chorus rock throughout the course of every song—with synthesizer washes, Nintendo sound-effects, and samples galore drizzled on the top of everything. A lot of bands try to be arty and clever. A lot of bands try to dance along the edge of multiple genres without ever falling into any one of them cohesively. A lot of bands try a lot of things. And a lot of bands—most bands, in fact—fail miserably in their attempts. But not HORSE the band. This band is amazing, through and through. If ‘Desperate Living’ were the soundtrack to the Apocalypse, it would be worth all the plagues of locusts and falling skies and everything else just to hear it on constant repeat over the final days of life on earth. The Impaler
