HORSEBACK – The Invisible Mountain CD
Relapse Records
Since living in North Carolina for the past twenty years I’ve learned that when it comes to the local Indie Rock media there are two common threads. The first is that they, as well as the bands they write about, are always three to four years behind any significant development in music and secondly they’re too ignorant or arrogant to admit it. Take this latest act which the local media harpies want you to believe there’s a musical coup about. Jenks Miller is the main musical creator behind HORSEBACK, a seminal one man act out of Chapel Hill, NC. Although I first learned about Miller’s work through a friend, it wasn’t until I found this release and did some research on HORSEBACK that I discovered the collective suck off by the local Indie Rock media over it. HORSEBACK was described to me as a one man shoegazer black metal act but after listening to this dink I’m here to tell you it’s not. I’ll go into more detail on what it really is later.
The Invisible Mountain originally came out last year on the proverbial speck of a label, Utech Records. Relapse decided to pony up for its reissue and signing Miller up for a future endeavor. I can understand the label’s decision since of late they’ve been putting out releases which hipsters have been swallowing up faster then what they usually get in the mouth from the back room of an adult book store in downtown Durham. It wasn’t initial sales which got HORSEBACK in the center of the hipster circle jerk since not even the Black Metal underground knows about em (I checked) but hype from mainstream Indie Rock media, local & on the web, salivating. While listening to this four track release, which is just over thirty eight minutes in length, I spent the time reading some of the interesting reviews this thing has garnered. Normally this is something I would never do but hearing how the music was going nowhere I figured on reading the hype to see why it has been placed upon HORSEBACK.
As usual the Indie Rock media has a way of describing things in mythic proportions to the point where I always find myself asking “are we listening to the same thing”? The four tracks on The Invisible Mountain do provide a cacophony of genre styles but one and that’s black metal. The genre itself has been pulled in many different directions since the early days of its second wave. What people consider today as post black metal is not new to my ears since I’ve been writing about bands that have been at the forefront since its official inception a few years ago. The Indie Rock media have always been clueless to black metal with the exception of knowing XASTHUR. What HORSEBACK offers up as far as black metal is a misconceived description of Miller’s vocal style. The man sounds more like a cancer patient with a passy muir valve implant than actual blackened style rasping. Voice modification is not the only thing phony about HORSEBACK.
Once again genres cross pollinating is nothing new but where some artists in the past have used it to expound on themes others have used it to hide their lack of creative talent. Therefore The Invisible Mountain comes off sounding like a pot luck dinner provided by a wannabe chef who couldn’t get a job at a fast food restaurant. To make matters worse he stole the seasoning. Miller must have taken to listening to his favorite college radio station in Chapel Hill and used it as his main hodge podge of influence. The Indie Rock media would like you to believe HORSEBACK as well as this dink simply avoids easy definitions, really? The lion’s share of The Invisible Mountain consists of post psych hippie jams mixed with some drone and topped with Berlin basement rock from the experimental 80s. Years ago the term was coined “progedelic” although it never stuck thankfully since its creators feared hipsters would use it to define yet another genre which no one wanted to be pigeon holed into. Remember what I said earlier about the Indie Rock media, as well as the bands they cover, being too ignorant or arrogant?
www.relapse.com
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