Album Review: Horsewhip - Laid To Waste
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Clocking in at a mere twenty-seven minutes, yet featuring eleven songs, Horsewhip’s second album wastes no time at all in delivering a furious assault on the ears. The Floridan four-piece seem to be carving their own niche through the metallic hardcore genre, following in the footsteps of the likes of Integrity.
Tracks like Stillborn, Holy Lies and Pray for the Dead are all aggressive statements of intent from Horsewhip; big, destructive sound alongside tortured vocals and more than a little bounce shows the band promise to be a fearsome live entity.
Delve a bit deeper and you start to uncover a host of influences you would not have expected to meet: among Feast’s big groove is a Dillinger Escape Plan level of insanity; hidden in Remission is more than a hint of a dance-beat, albeit twisted and repackaged with discordance and a polyrhythmic drum.
One motif that arises again and again on Laid to Waste is the use of a Cult of Luna-like guitar sound; triplets feature prominently amid the barely-distorted metallic riff of Charnel House or the gallop riff of Closure, adding a level of texture and interest and more than a hint of melancholy.
The band are a tight unit, with rhythm section Alex Bond and bassist Jeff Howe laying down a platform upon which Shaun Dreers can simultaneously weave sonic tapestries and create aural carnage. Dreers shares vocal duties with Mike Grantham and their joint custody of the microphone is tortured and aggressively metallic.
Sitting in among the madness are welcome ambient passages. Whether they be the introduction to When it Comes or Ruin, which acts as a full-on coda to Inertia Waits, the one-note, eerie soundscapes feel like avoiding the riot by sitting in a haunted house.
On Laid to Waste Horsewhip have brought together a myriad of styles, be that hardcore, metalcore and punk, with the smattering of ambient and noise, and successfully fashioned a record that is designed mess you up
