Artist: Raging Speedhorn
Label: SPV Records
Release: 2007
Angry speedhorn. Razor-sharp, relentless as a pit bull, with a hole in its head. British morbidity brilliantly caricatured in a juicy tangle of metal riffing and hard core, with detours into punk or a dirty Motorhead rock n’ roll gallop, all slathered in abortive sludge contractions. This is the fourth studio album from Raging Speedhorn. Before making it, the band swapped out their vocalist: newcomer Bloody Kev stepped in for Frank Regan, and it shows in the band’s musical progress, because Bloody Kev brings a much wider palette of shades to his vocal approach. The other new arrival goes by the name of Dave Thompson, and he’s the one grinding away on bass.
Raging Speedhorn keep growing as a force, and their new studio album “Before Thje Sea Was Built” proves it beyond doubt. It’s a seriously ambitious beast that sounds downright complex, even though, believe it or not, most of the songs run a good two minutes, so the whole record barely adds up to a solid 28 minutes. A record-breakingly short album for the new millennium.
These guys keep the production extremely raw and live, no makeup. Plug in and boom! That’s the guiding principle. They build an incredible groove that feels thrilling thanks to a wonderfully compatible mix of furious screamo vocals and avalanches of heavy, rolling riffs. The result is a neat sonic picture, boosted by rattling, clanking bass and the paralyzing cannon thunder of the drums, whose extra-loud cymbal racket gratefully brings even more of that garage liveliness into the sound, and it’s with us the whole way.
The two vocalists conjure up a lower and a higher pitched screamo variety, a constantly thrilling contrast that unapologetically strings together the blackest of blacks of humanity’s doomsday. Touches of doom-laden ruin are only logical, and they never play a central role. You only feel occasional swerves toward it, but combined with all those other genre touches I mentioned, they point to the band’s experimental strength in expressing its musical views, which ends up creating something of its own!
The band’s style is complex, yet easy to listen to. Its trademark is fusing metal and hard core elements into a heavy, gloomy, tragically seasoned ambient moment that often takes on a scandalously dissonant look, building an apocalyptic feel. Raging Speedhorn often spice up a riff with fast single-string picking, familiar from a far more controlled, high-pitched production version typical of the black metal genre. But with Raging Speedhorn it sounds much more real, more down-to-earth, let’s call it more tangible! The faster parts, where the band spits out its rage, are followed by shorter, more subtly shaped passages, where the gloom of the trapped atmosphere surges even more intensely. A typical example is Sound Of Waves, which feels deliberately creepy in its overall effect on the listener. Interestingly, the band doesn’t want to walk out of the boxing ring as the big winner here, so it doesn’t repeat the trick in the closing Jump Ship, which carries a very similar main riff but a different basic rhythm, conjuring up a completely new mood, yet Raging Speedhorn left the song unfinished. The end of the track, and with it the album, is chopped off in true punk fashion. Totally on purpose. “Cap” and the boys cut the song off without mercy at the moment of a intense build-up of high-tension atmosphere! They leave you hungry and more than ready for another helping of their boom.
“Before The Sea Was Built” is an album that doesn’t leave the listener indifferent. On the first pass, as you fight your way through it, you feel one single-layered eruption of primitively destructive energy, craving transformation. On that first pass, all you feel is fire and pain. With every listen the picture of the album comes together. It’s incredible considering it measures barely a solid 28 minutes, yet Raging Speedhorn manage to string together a remarkably dynamic wave of trapped moods through an avalanche of burning riffs flowing in harmonious continuity, subjected to bold experimentation in daring rhythm changes from song to song. The band keeps its authentic rage, a frontal, aggressive stance of tearing pit bull teeth, and combines it with high musical fluidity. Completely headstrong and seriously intelligent. Music for all you desperate souls who want to grab a weapon and do something really stupid!
Lineup
John Loughlin – vocals
Bloody Kev – vocals
Gareth Smith – guitar
Jay Thompson – guitar
Dave Thompson – bass
Gordon Morison – drums
Production
Larry Hibbitt
Tracklist
1. Everything Changes
2. Before The Sea Was Built
3. Dignity Stripper
4. Mishima
5. Last Comet From Nothingness
6. Born To Twist The Knife
7. Who Will Guard The Guards?
8. Too Drunk To Give A Fuck
9. Sound Of Waves
10. Jump Ship
Album length: 28.28
