ALBUM REVIEW: Not A Sound In Heaven – Sugar Horse

SUGAR HORSE have maintained a pleasing idiosyncratic streak throughout their musical career. Musically, the four-piece typically crush together punishing doom riffs and euphoric shoegaze textures as a starting point; combine that with a streak of irreverent humour, political activism, and a willingness to add friction and juxtaposition to the listening experience, and you have a fairly unique act. Recurrent appearances at the likes of Arctangent Festival, alongside a couple of EPs, one with a vast array of collaborators, the other a single 17-minute epic, led to a sophomore album released on noted heavy experimental label Pelagic Records.

It’s only fitting, then, that Not A Sound In Heaven flips the script a little: a shift to Fat Dracula Records and the use of a self-built recording studio. Each song was written and recorded as a live take by the full band, eschewing extended rehearsals outside of the recording sessions. It’s their shortest album to date (assuming you don’t skip the 20 minutes of drone provocation that closed out The Grand Scheme Of Things). The net result is a punchier record, albeit one that is still recognisably SUGAR HORSE from the sonic palette through to the aberrant song titles.

The record opens with the relentless, pulsing beat of Fire Graphics, anchored by a simple but powerful riff and an excoriation of the crimes committed by Western capitalism. Guitars are laden with fuzz, a raw, distorted crackling that growls and breaks apart through the speakers. The effect is more pronounced on the sludgy thumps that open single Secret Speech, backed by swirling vocal-like synths out of some terrifying dungeon, and the scratchy riffs that open Ex-Human Shield, reminiscent of a motorcycle revving its volatile engine.

There’s more than heavy riffs at play across the songs, with cleaner ethereal sections often sitting side by side against the heavy riffage with minimal transition time, particularly on Ex-Human Shield. Album centrepiece History’s Biggest T-Shirts goes a step further, its first part smashing between synth-pop and screams before settling into a five-minute wash of droning ambience and vocoders. Amidst this and its unflinching political bent (quoting directly from socialist revolutionary Salvador Allende), it regroups for a well-earned cathartic closer. These lurches leave Not A Sound In Heaven feeling more chaotic and yet more compelling than their previous work. Vocalist Ashley Tubb anchors the swings in tone, his distinctive vocal style carrying shades of ENTER SHIKARI‘s Rou Reynolds in the screams and THE CURE‘s Robert Smith in the cleans.

The rawness of the album strengthens its message, and there are points where you can visibly see the construction lines. The lack of a click track in the live recording sessions at its best lends a dynamism absent from most modern recordings, but there are definite moments where you can hear the beat slip unintentionally. The production lacks some immediacy too; the full force of the album’s dynamic shifts gets lost somewhere amidst the mix and the walls of fuzz, undercutting the heft of the biggest riffs.

But there’s also an experimental streak that keeps things fresh, including a newfound embrace of electronic elements, previewed on the standalone singles from last year that didn’t make their way onto the album. Stabs of drum and bass find themselves creeping into Fire Graphics, and the ten-minute closer You Can’t Say Dallas Doesn’t Love You dabbles in dub sounds. It’s a neat expansion of the band’s core two-track palette of doom and dream, drawn together through the punchy lyrical content that takes an unflinching political view of the horrors of the world.

Not A Sound In Heaven is not a perfect record, by any means. But the areas where it falls short are the result of deliberate choices by SUGAR HORSE to approach the creative process on their terms, rather than of a lack of talent or vision. Shaving off those rough edges would run counter to its very intent, and kill the fiery spirit that powers the album. It’s a compelling parallel to its themes, deriding capitalism’s efficient markets and the damage they wreak on us. Perhaps we’re better off with something raw and imperfect.

Rating: 9/10

Not A Sound In Heaven is set for release on April 10th via Fat Dracula Records. 

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