ALBUM REVIEW: Joyride The Pale Horse – Heart Attack Man
Joyride The Pale Horse may just be the most fully realised outing from Cleveland punks HEART ATTACK MAN. Weaving their signature penchant for tongue-in-cheek humour blended with deeply brutal reflections on intense subjects, the band turn to existentialism on Joyride The Pale Horse. Amongst the bleakness of the void, they look inwards, and sonically look to push at their roots. The result is an elevation and polishing of the HEART ATTACK MAN sound and creative approach.
One Last Song opens the album with the bolstering and catchy hooks that weave throughout the rest of Joyride The Pale Horse. Choruses are large and loud, asserting a fierce power behind the album. This is HEART ATTACK MAN at full force, with tracks like End Of The Gun and Laughing Without Smiling propelling this intensity.
Part of this journey into their sound finds HEART ATTACK MAN leaning into their grittier influences. Pulling from noise-rock and hardcore, these grittier sounds permeate throughout the album’s riffs. Spit is a prime example of these heavier chugs and stomping rhythms finding force against the signature HEART ATTACK MAN siren-like guitar riffs. The track offers a wry commentary on artificial intelligence and its bleak dismissal of human creativity. Lay Down And Die adopts a faster approach, introducing grooves into the punchiness of its hook. The track soars out amongst the album’s heavy hitters and is one of the most memorable tracks on the album.
Alongside their drive to push their sound, HEART ATTACK MAN also push a creative concept on Joyride The Pale Horse. Staring down their existential thoughts, every track is haunted by death in the abstract allusions and witty turns of phrase that are used to dance around the topic. Call Of The Void positions despair with a snappy and fast hitting drum propelling the answering of a metaphorical telephone call from the embodied ‘demons or [my] conscience’. Equally Quit While I’m Still Ahead reckons with existence in perhaps the most explicit way, framing it as a race to the finish.
The delivery of these concepts has a lot to do with the punchiness of the tracks on Joyride The Pale Horse. Amongst the bolstering moments, tracks like One Good Reason and I’ll See You There slow the tempo down and could go unnoticed. These deeper cuts have a lot to offer, including the emotionally wrought scream of ‘I don’t wanna be here’ that haunts the ending of One Good Reason. But it is difficult to feel as if these moments aren’t left in the dust of the sheer velocity at which the rest of the album moves.
It is on The Gallows however, that HEART ATTACK MAN fully hone each element of the album. Sarcastic humour laces the track’s sardonic yet brutally honest reflections on growing up and young-adulthood. Sonically paying homage to 90s punk and pop-punk guitar hooks, the track lifts out the album as a key example of where HEART ATTACK MAN have elevated their songwriting to pack bigger punches.
As the album closes on title track Joyride The Pale Horse, vocalist Eric Egan takes on the persona of tour guide. Ushering you out of the album, the track spins out of a lighter and bouncier tone into self-deprecating spirals and ultimately into abstract phrases, all skirting around the idea of finality.
Joyride The Pale Horse finds HEART ATTACK MAN consulting the elements that make them the band that they are, and pushing at the roots of each. This finds them picking from heavier influences, and adopting a sharper style to their lyricism and songwriting. These might not be new ideas, but they are pushing them to their most realised result yet. Joyride The Pale Horse hits exactly what it is meant to, offering a sharp and snappy album that cements the potential of HEART ATTACK MAN’s sound and packs a real punch in the process.
Rating: 8/10
Joyride The Pale Horse is out now via self-release.
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