Band: Horseback/LocrianCountry: Chapel Hill, North Carolina/Chicago, Illinois
Style: Experimental Black Metal/Drone
Label: Utech Records
In the last couple of months, my tastes have been shifting, as you could probably see if you look at this blog every so often. The likes of last year's "The Crystal World" from Locrian definitely made an impression on me and in the last few months, Horseback has quickly become one of my favorite groups. This collaboration between the two is something I have been looking forward to since I heard about its inception.
Having only a vague idea of what this was actually going to sound like from reading other people's descriptions of this, I was pretty much coming in fresh. Both bands have considerable track records for being experimental with their sound, while both certainly acknowledge the influence from black metal, this collaboration is certainly something very different from what I've heard either of them do on their own. The two tracks on here certainly exhibit a great amount of experimentation while retaining a very firm grounding in drone and black metal. The Gift is a lush and very beautiful piece of what brings to mind post-rock meets ambient music, not that that's really all that descriptive anyway, but really reminds me more of the "post-rock"-ish sort of stuff Horseback has released on a record like "Impale Gold Horn" to an extent. Our Epitaph on the other hand is much darker and haunting, definitely bringing to mind more of Locrian's material simply due to the starkness and very desolate atmosphere that it provides. However, this track I feel covers a lot more ground because, to me anyway, it evolves a lot more.
Overall, this record did not disappoint, while I might have liked to have heard more material, what this release provided was definitely high caliber stuff. This is certainly a bit different, for both projects, yet I'm proud to say that it honestly sounds like more of a collaboration rather than two bands on a split. Definitely check this out, as well as both bands, very promising and very good.
Overall Score: 8
Highlights: Our Epitaph
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