EP REVIEW: Drugs – Sugar Horse
SUGAR HORSE are a hard band to pin down. Their first EP from last year, Druj implemented a strange array of doom, shoegaze, stoner, hardcore and more. In their next instalment, Drugs, there’s a huge pool of potential in their work that makes this second EP of work just as unusual.
Title track Drugs is a battering hardcore doom mix of visceral screams and stark riffs that bellow beneath the bark of a snare drum. The entire arrangement is snarky, snarling and mean, and by the third section, where everything suddenly becomes still and tempered, a chorus of voices rises out, serene and calming under the threat of a downplayed riff that tinkers away quietly, awaiting the primal screams that close out the track.
Really unusual stuff, the direction is completely open to all sorts of music ideas, Pity Party feels like a completely different band of the most part. Hitting into the much lighter, shoegaze territory, the upward momentum of this track strikes an inspiring note and eases the tension of the previous track. The clean vocals are well preformed, and layered over soaring guitars. The tone takes a subtle movement into a much more hardcore territory as the vocals transition into a scream, and fade to a doomy, disjointed resolution.
The hilariously named Richard Branson In The Sky With Diamonds appears more akin to its predecessor than to the title track, spacious and open, towering ambience breathing freely- that is until it’s abrupt sucker punch into a face mashing blaze of disjointed riffing and screaming. The best way to describe this track is if DEPECHE MODE and PINK FLOYD decided to make a metal record. It whirrs around between subdued intersections, a lulling drone and a smacked drum, scant and simmering, and into hard hitting blows of throat ripping vocals. As we transcend into the final moments of the track, we loop back into the ambient shoegaze of the beginning of the track, infused with the chaos of the middle section. It’s powerful and intentional, droning and overflowing with tonal ideas that will defy expectation.
When September Rain is another track that utilises the isolated bounce of the snare to entice, as a quiet melody is sung over a quiet breath of synth-y notes. This is the most stripped back of all the tracks, and while it implements another choral surge, which brings a certain angelic quality, it’s maybe a little too wholesome for some listeners.
Dog Egg on the other hand, is much heavier. It’s implementation of heavy doom and sludge elements make for a really interesting contrast to it’s more experimental, almost silent, unplugged guitar moments. While this is not jazz, not even in the same musical realm, it’s approach to composition has a similar pace, an abruptness and a confidence in its strangeness. Glimmering digital tones, dissonant droning, screeching feedback, barking drums, wailing vocals all go towards a completely reckless sounding, unique finale.
This is an album that’s not going to please everyone. It’s almost designed to be illusive, constantly shifting and altering its direction away from what you were anticipating. Some will find this frustrating and unmanageable, not least because of the variety of ideas SUGAR HORSE have the audacity to smash together. However, those with the more punk mentality, Drugs embodies a frenzied passion for music and a very particular style that might just hit the sweet spot between destruction and serenity.
Rating: 7/10
Drugs is set for release April 17th via self release.
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