Liste der Bands Drone Horseback Half Blood

Musician Jenks Miller has had quite a prolific career in the rock and metal scene thus far. He’s participated in various musical acts, including Mount Moriah, Un Deux Trois, and In The Year Of The Pig. However, Miller’s most known work is his project named Horseback. Based in North Carolina since 2006, Miller, with the help of others, including drummer John Crouch of sludge band Caltrop, has generated some of the most hypnotic, entrancing, and bizarrely intriguing music over the past years. Combining elements of atmospheric metal, rock, jazz, drone, black metal, stoner, and doom metal, Horseback as a whole represents one diverse and darkly stellar effort. After turning the heads of new fans with numerous releases such as “The Invisible Mountain” back in 2009, Horseback adds a new masterpiece to their long collection in 2012, with their latest record “Half Blood.” This album makes for yet another great musical treasure from this project that serves as one of the most darkly provocative records of the year.

As Miller did in one of his previous works in “The Invisible Mountain,” “Half Blood” plugs together Horseback’s two extremes of dark and experimental musical soundscapes with atmospheric, slow, and bizarrely crafted drone. The album kicks off with “Mithras,” a spacey and entrancing prog-jazz tune which truly ensnares the listener into a trailing journey through the cosmos. However, this tune has a rather strange twist to it: The vocals that accompany this chilled stoner beat are the faded black metal-influenced high-pitch growls and snarls by Miller himself. Although this may throw certain new listeners off, these odd vocals somehow manage to fit in with the music itself, and it ultimately generates one interesting, and unique musical mix. This also is the case for the following track “Ahriman,” although the music alone flows in the vein of psychedelic stoner rock with a bit of country to it. Tracks such as these two unveil the inventive and progressive fusion of jazz and rock that “Half Blood” has to offer.

On the other hand, “Half Blood” also offers hypnotic musical dreamscapes like Horseback has done in their past records, including “Forbidden Planet” and “Impale Golden Horn.” These soundscapes are both euphoric and stimulating, and they flawlessly paint a grand picture inside of the listener’s mind. The band combines distorted guitar noise, electric static, and other atmospheric and echoing sound effects that altogether combine into stellar drone music that creates a story within itself. The third track “Inheritance (The Changeling)” serves as the best example for this. When you listen, you can’t help but picture crawling out of a pitch-black cavern and into a heavenly utopia of bliss, freedom, and nature. Then, about two-thirds into the track, this invigorating soundscape fades back into a dark-toned mix of static and the distorted guitar noise with a pleasant piano tune towards the end. This is where the music depicts that the “events” that took place at the start of the track were all a psychedelic dream. Miller, the mastermind behind Horseback, executes his formula of using his dreamy music to weave together a story inside the listener’s head perfectly.

Judging from how “Half Blood” contains seven tracks that each fall into the category of either being a metallic rock-fusion beat or a euphoric soundscape, this album took a pretty enormous risk of sounding like a haphazardly mixed bag of jumbled-together tracks. Luckily, this isn’t the case, thanks to Miller’s stellar writing. Despite the different styles of music each track displays, they all share the same spaced-out and atmospheric feel throughout. They each take the listener through a trip through the outer regions, and that overall mood ties all of the songs together into one finely bound together effort. Another large risk that the band takes is that the music, especially tracks such as “Mithras” and “Ahriman,” takes: The tracks overall are very repetitive. Obviously, when music turns out repetitive, the listener usually becomes quite bored by the music’s tired and stale formula. Oddly enough, however, “Half Blood” manages to swerve around that obstacle. This is because the music alone is quite calm and relaxing, there is no need for the tracks to progress dynamically in order to keep the listeners away from the stop button. The songs only need to rely on their constantly soothing nature in order to carry out their full effect of relaxation onto the listener. This all extinguishes any real possible flaws that would really have rendered “Half Blood” as a merely thrown together and lifeless pile of tracks. Instead, the incredible songwriting concealed within this record makes it all the more effective and memorable.

Horseback has once again put out another great record that old fans need to get their hands on as soon as possible. The inventive mix of psychedelic rock fusion and entrancing musical dreamscapes is as clever as it is meditative. Miller has done it again with “Half Blood,” and anyone who is looking for a new and fresh take at the metal and rock scene really should at least give this album a shot. While about half of the tracklist has a steady country-fried stoner rock beat with deathly snarls in the background may cause some listeners to turn the other direction, it’s things like those that make “Half Blood” a truly unique record. Sticking back to their roots found in their album “The Invisible Mountain,” Horseback once again has created a new soundtrack to the deepest corners of your mind.