Horizoner

It can be easy to be skeptical of the little "For fans of..." stickers that adorn the cover of most albums. Often times, they don't adequately prepare you for the journey you're about to embark on with an album, and seem to just be dropping names to grab your attention. On Horizoner, Bloodhorse's first full-length on Translation Loss, they make the bold claim to be for fans of Hawkwind and Hellhammer, and it's safe to say that they've delivered on that promise. This album finds the Boston trio making some new ground for themselves in the post-metal landscape, intertwining the earthy sludge of stoner metal with the fierce gallop of hardcore punk and old-school thrash. The result exists somewhere at the intersection of Hawkwind's "Brainstorm" and Hellhammer's "Massacra." "A Passing Thought to the Contrary" feels like the band's mission statement, showing the full spectrum of what Bloodhorse is trying to craft. The track is like a survey course in metal, opening with raw, doomy sludge that gives way to thundering thrash before eventually breaking down into a spacious stoner jam and finally heading full force into a driving ending, reminiscent of classic British heavy metal. The rest of the album unfolds in a similar fashion, ebbing and flowing between atmospheric builds with massive, thick riffs creating a nice, slow burn before the songs trample the listener with a rapid d-beat assault. The whole package is tied together by the dual vocal harmonies that soar above it all, evoking the triumphant feeling of old-school gang vocals, giving the songs an all-together more epic feeling. Horizoner is a successful experiment in stoner metal that both defies and embraces the conventions of the genre, grabbing the listener and taking him on a tour of what heavy metal was, could, and should be; a place for musicians to experiment in melding genres and pushing them to their loudest limits.