HYLI Vol XXII: Band of Horses and Emperor
Patrick sends Andy some The OC-core indie-folk and Andy sends Patrick some (more) Scandinavian black-metal (again).
It’s me, Patrick, back here yet again. Andy has a baby and babies have Issues so he is unable to write this for you lovely folks this week. What’s new with y’all? You watching basketball? That Draymond dude is a wild one huh? Anyways, the music is good right now. The Angel Olsen record blew my whig back. We aren’t talking about that today though. We got some fresh stinkin’ 30 year old metal for ya. Hope You Like It.
Band of Horses - Everything All The Time
Patrick: Andy seems to think, for whatever reason, that folk is a super one-dimensional, Bob Dylan-esque, type thing that has never evolved. What a brat. There was a whole time in the mid-’00s where we had a handful of indie-but-also-kinda-folk bands pop up. Fleet Foxes come to mind. Beirut, for sure. Of course, your Mumford and Sons and the Lumineers of the world populate this space, as well (Andy: Ah yes, some of my favorites). But Band of Horses has always been my favorite of this group. Their debut, Everything All the Time, and its follow-up Cease to Begin, absolutely rock. But there’s a fair share of acoustic-ish elements to these albums that lead it to fall under the indie-folk umbrella. Especially the debut, when former Carissa’s Wierd (not a typo) member Mat (not a typo either) Brooke was still in the songwriting core of the band.
There are a lot of songs on this that are always in my regular rotation. Brooke’s voice works well with main singer/frontman Ben Bridwell’s on “I Go to the Barn Because I Like The” (somehow not a typo still) and “St. Augustine.” “The Funeral” and “The Great Salt Lake” are great TV show soundtrack songs. And then “Part One” and “The First Song” hit real hard for me. I love this shit. They have good stuff on all of their albums, including this year’s which was kind of a return to form, but this first one takes the cake for me. Hope You Like It.
Andy: You ever have those experiences where your brain has wires crossed and it’s hard to untangle them and you sort of just short circuit for a moment (Patrick: no my brain doesn’t have wires thanks)? Pat sent me Band of Horses and I thought they were Horse the Band which is an entirely different thing and it took me wayyyy too long to put the pieces together (Patrick: kids, reading is fundamental)!
Apparently, I was getting a month of folk music but… is this folk music? This seems pretty drastically different than some of the other ones (Patrick: folk is a spectrum just like metal). Maybe because it is an actual band (not Horse the Band that is a different band) instead of just one dude with a guitar in a community center (Patrick: if one genre seems likely to play in a community center, it’s black metal, not folk lol)?
Anyway, I already knew the song “The Funeral” from the massively successful and not at all disappointing final season of How I Met Your Mother. Overall, I thought the album was enjoyable but not super memorable? Like, I wasn’t ready to turn it off but I also wasn’t like…jamming out or anything. I Like Horse the Band more than Band of Horses (Patrick: I like that song “A Million Exploding Suns”).
Emperor - In The Nightside Eclipse
Andy: Emperor is another one of the bands that is included as part of the Early Norwegian black metal scene. Very involved with the black metal inner circle at Helvete (Patrick: Helvete is my favorite font), they participated in some of the church burnings in 1992 with Varg and Euronymous. Also, drummer Faust murdered a man named Magne Andreassen for making sexual advances toward him (Patrick: so many murders, this absolutely sucks). Faust is a doofus loser and my enjoyment of Emperor took a decent hit when, after serving 9 years in prison, Faust rejoined them for some live performances. I’m barely touching on all the crazy that went on in Norway during the early 90s - it is worth doing a deep dive into the history because it is wild. Not that it is necessarily good, but if you are a little baby who doesn’t like to read and can only consume things in the most American watered-down way possible, 2018’s Lords of Chaos is better than nothing.
Anyway! Emperor’s In The Nightside Eclipse is very good and a pioneer in symphonic black metal, leading the way for bands like Dimmu Borgir to bring it to Hot Topics around the world. In my opinion, this is one of the most accessible early black metal albums. It is good. Hope You Like It.
Patrick: I am very conflicted here. I generally make it a personal project of mine to not listen to music by people who suck shit. Apparently, Andy doesn’t share this philosophy. I can’t blame him. If he eliminated all the metal made by bad people he’d have, like, half of the music wiped from existence. That’s being unfair, it’s a smaller percentage, but it still seems like a massive, weird problem (Andy: We have been hyper-focused on a small collective of people doing this. It is okay.)
Anyways, uhh, this album rocks? I mentioned last week with Ulver that the vocals were what I think of when I imagine black metal and Emperor doubled-up on that with the guitar sounds that I hear when I think of black metal. They sound so fucking good. Especially on “I Am the Black Wizards.” These little Scandinavian dorks love to sing about Gandalf and Saruman-looking dweebs. Is that why Of Monsters and Men and other Scandinavian folk bands suck? Too much “Hey Ho!”-ing and not enough Lord of the Rings worship? (Andy: LOTR rules. There is a reason why half of the metal bands ever use Lord of the Rings names lol.)
Anyways, this band fucking rocks. I totally get why they’re considered among the GOATs of black-metal. The one interesting note I had with this one that stands apart from some of the other albums we’ve done recently is this band, at least on this album, absolutely loves putting some choir-type backing vocals on basically every song. It’s kinda nice? I thought I’d hate it at first but it kinda sets the scene for the songs. Almost feels like Final Fantasy boss fight-type stuff. I’m sure Andy will love this note and not put some quippy “does it?” type bullshit in here. I Liked It.