Band: Sugar Horse
Single: GakEater
Label: Self-released
Release date: 31 October
Sounds like: Eating your own head on an acid holiday
It’s comforting that every Sugar Horse track seems like it could soundtrack the end of the world. If that isn’t a statement to make you want to listen, I don’t know what is. Those unfamiliar with the Bristol four-piece should consult this article I wrote about them near the beginning of the year on their spectacular Druj EP.
Sugar Horse are a band that fall into the realm of unclassifiable. Their sound could almost be akin to post-metal, with elements of bludgeoning hardcore, waves of choking shoegaze and suffocating, grunge-dripping riffs. GakEater is their new single, clocking in at 7 minutes – there’s heavy references to a crooked government, snorting fat lines of coke and being utterly despicable.
From the opening minute of tranquility and the whispered lyrics, “You can feel him on your chest/Weighing heavy on your soul. There’s a devil in this place/I can feel him taking hold” everything has a feel of calm and serenity. This is soon shattered as that ever-expanding, claustrophobic, smothering noise of the guitars hits the speakers. The droning, doom-laden lingering notes that hang in the air on this chew away at everything else, until that’s all you can hear; it spreads like a virus, consuming with this noxious vapor. What is going on here? These Bristol lads are drawing on elements of Deftones certainly, laced with the moody, brooding heaviness of bong-water doom-metallers High on Fire or even Sleep with the space-rock elements of Satellite Years-era Hopesfall.
More credit to the earth-rending riffs near the end on this, they belch, scream and bulldoze with this overwhelming fury and sneering disgust and sound fucking massive on a decent set of headphones. This is crushing, nasty and harrowing noise-rock fed through the weirdness filter and splattered into your ears. Honestly, you’ll keep wanting to listen to this over and over again, absolutely huge-sounding, caustic and grotesquely amusing, Sugar Horse deserve your attention. I would dearly love an album of this, just to see how weird and wonderful they can go.
Buy/listen/experience/sniff glue to more of Sugar Horse’s ridiculous output via the Invisible Lama shop or on bandcamp.
Links
Sugar Horse
Sugar Horse on Twitter
Sugar Horse Instagram
Sugar Horse YouTube