Horse Culture is a three-piece band from Virginia consisting Timothy Hawks, Nika McKagen, and Danny Shyti. Back in the summer of 2017 we wrote about their debut full-length, House, a record which showed off the band’s distinctively heavy brand of indie rock. The sound is something of a sonic collage, drawing upon post-hardcore, post-punk and noise rock. As we wrote in our review:
House seems able to conjure its own atmospheric patterns, unseen forces called forth from homebrew hexes, leaving the listener dazed and amazed, like a torn page that’s been swirled around and left strewn on the ground.
Again released by our friends at Furious Hooves, new EP Follow sees Horse Culture develop this aesthetic, delving further into the dark and moody corners of indie rock. From the opening salvo the title track the tone is set, like the stomping approach of some great black beast that stops for nothing and no one. The tempo might drop for the sludgy vocals, though the beat remains, taking on an ominous, creeping quality that soon finds a new level of frantic zeal.
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=121136345 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=2761059619]
The only sub-six minute track on the release, ‘Anteo’ blooms from uncertain beginnings into demonic fury, like the howls of some reluctant entity exorcised from its host. ‘Angels’ sees a return to the lurching horror of the opener, the unrelenting cadence like some hellforce on the warpath. Indeed, there’s something Brueghelian about this iteration of Horse Culture, and closer ‘Blue’ only reinforces the feeling. There’s a repetitive, hypnotic quality to the music, a sense of inevitability in the reiteration. Darkness rising from the earth, darkness metastasising. Darkness as compelled by marching drums. A triumph of darkness through its sheer conviction, some terrible looming thing determined to make itself known.
Follow is out now via Furious Hooves and you can get it from Bandcamp, including a nice cassette edition.
