PULLED APART BY HORSES - The Haze

I just rescued two Bengal cats and, my God, they are nuts. I’ve had one Bengal before but two of them together are punk rock mayhem- one walks across my head while the other one throws things off my bedside cabinet to get me to wake up. One scrapes cat litter all over the floor for me to clean up. I clean it up and the other one then goes and scrapes it all over the floor again. I could go on but you get the idea. Where am I going with this? Another of their tricks is to scream at the top of their lungs to make a point. They cannot be tamed and are indestructible. And so we come to Pulled Apart By Horses. One of the most high energy, exciting and perhaps underrated bands in the UK right now, what I find, and have always found, refreshing about them is that the pure wild chaos that they evoke translates to their recordings like no other band around this minute.

‘The Haze’ is no exception but it is clear to see that these Northern maestros are also experimenting with a slightly different direction, following the departure of one of their founder members (they have a new drummer). Though the screaming heavy rock/ grunge largely remains, shouting and snarling its defiance against, well, possibly everything (‘Prince of Meats’, obviously, is one of those examples), there is also more than a hint of a melody on some tracks. At times slacker in approach on ‘Lamping’, others, like ‘Neighbourhood Witch’ give singer Tom Hudson the sleazy voice of Marc Bolan’s ghost with a little less vibrato and definitely no eyeliner. ‘My Evil Twin’, also has an, er, evil bassline. Overall, ‘The Haze’ stays true to what Pulled Apart By Horses are about, which is producing simply shit-inducing rock and roll. The cats also howled their approval (though it didn’t make them shit because they’re double-hard bastards from Essex).

Anna C

 

Released 17th March, 2017. Sorry for the tardiness.