If swamp metal (like, say, Black Tusk) is punk, thrash, southern rock, sludge and grunge in a musical stew, then Hail! Hornet are swamp n' roll.
Fitting too, as while I write this it's 96.8 degrees outside, the A/C is half-broken, and on this second floor it's probably 115 degrees. It's hot (and humid) enough that I can actually feel my hair and beard grow out; shit, I can feel them WANT to grow out. I'm shirtless, sweating, unshaved (intoxicated?), and am really enjoying universes align here, really enjoying this synchronicity: my mental and physical worlds have almost perfectly coalesced into this record's sounds.
This record, this Disperse the Curse, perfectly encapsulates where I'm "at" now. Feel me?
No? Then dig this:
Current and former members of Buzzov*en, Weedeater, Sourvein, Bongzilla, Morne and others make up Hail! Hornet-- and if you're reading this site, you can probably guess exactly what this sounds like.
What you might not guess, however, is how much fun they seem to have been having recording this. This is 2011's version of 1955's good blowing sessions. Everyone got together, vibed off each other, and made that alchemy obvious enough to place on wax: dig us having a blast rockin out with our cock[in?] out. This is the dixie sludge metal equivalent of Monk, Parker, Stanley Turrentine and Coleman Hawkins jamming after hours at Minton's.
And Goddamn is it fun stuff.
Disperse the Curse is Motorhead if they smoked more than they drank, it's Entombed or the Cro-Mags if they were from the Deep South, it's...
...you feel me.
It's fun, uptempo sludge: a rickety old beast, bored of lurching town to town destroying all, laying waste, et yawn cetera-- who went and got stoned on an argot fungus in wheat and St. Vitus Danced his goddamned way to a primrose path of carnage and mayhem that smelled like diesel oil, weed, cicadas and hot amp cable.
Still in? Yeah you are. Don't act like that doesn't sound like mad fun, son-- the album version of mudding, cow-tippin, going shoeless for a season, or nailing your hot cousin.
Specifics:
"Gifted Horse," track 2, is a particular ripper, as is "Glass Roses." "Unholy Foe" slows down a bit --just long enough to crush, you understand-- then "Scars" punishes you with a pear of agony for daring to think Hail! Hornet had slowed down for even a second.
That last simile got a bit more grotesque than I'd intended.
ANYhoo... go listen.
--Horn
http://www.myspace.com/2hailhornet
