It must be pretty bleak down in Somerset, at least if you’re holed up in a barn for 15 months pouring your soul into writing and rehearsing material for an album – with or without cider on tap. Henry Blacker isn’t a man but a a rock band, a three piece, with two members of Hey Colossus plus another dude on drums. I dread to think what went on in that barn, but the material they cooked up is monumentally heavy.
Then, after so long honing the material, they recorded the album in just two days. The result is an album that sounds like a band spilling its guts onto tape, unadulterated and raw. At its heart, ‘Hungry Dogs Will Eat Dirty Puddings’ is a proper old-school rock album with blues-based riffs cranked up to eleven and played with a stoner edge. Only this is violently angry, twisted and deranged, the sludgy guitars raw and abrasive, thick with distortion and as black as tar.
|
Sonically, ‘Hungry Dogs’ has groove, but in a wasted, twisted, messed-up way. It’s gnarly. And then there are the lyrics. Dark, for sure. Try this dainty little couplet for size: ‘ all i heard was
a grinding, like a cow at a cud / that’s when my head went a-rolling, into a slick of my thickening blood.’ It’s not pretty, a visceral dredging of the most painful, anguished depths, a (literal) spilling of the guts.
THenry Blacker Online
|
