We don’t know how or why, but we often get requests from England and New Zealand. We’re flattered, but, as we try to warn, when reviewing our locals we give them the benefit of the doubt (mostly b/c we want free tickets and vinyl and t-shirts), but we hold national and international artists to a higher standard.

You’ve been warned.

Hozomeen is Graham Thompson and Graham Thompson, we assume, is Hozomeen. He writes and performs in various groups in the Newcastle upon Tyne area of England that we assume are in the noise rock vein/genre (because we have expressed our affection for that kind of music from that particular area before).

Based on the description we were expecting Hozomeen to be far more arty and less enjoyable then it is. To be blunt, it ROCKS. In the way that say Whores., Shellac, Jesus Lizard, and other rhythmic noise/sludge rocks. There are cogent, sludgey riffs. There is loud sing saying. There are noisey passages on fairly traditional rock instruments. It also approaches earlier variants of post-hardcore and sludge such as Quicksand and Helmet.

Each song on the LP released as a ‘single’ is accompanied by a similarly haunting and empty slightly different colored image with its title printed on. Like so;

It begins with Laughter. An evolving piece of feedback, uncertain drums, muddy quotes, and the dulcet tones of a banjo. From there it launches into The Hogs, a driving sludge-noise masterpiece, complete with loudly sung-spoken vocals. Then on into the instrumental Lack, a tricky rhythmic piece of post-hardcore that goes everywhere you don’t expect it to but really should. Coursing takes us further down the ride of post-hardcore noise, enticing with atonal arpeggios and straight up harshly isolated tribal drumming, heading into all out chaotic frenetty (no that’s not a word, we made it up. It works here. Trust us).

One Kilohertz teases like an old Unsane or newer Hey Colossus song; it really is impressive how Thompson gets a really full noise band song playing as he is each instrument solo (or so he tells us). The vocals come on like Part Chimp or intense Tool, Torche, or some other metal hybrid that’s sung shouted right on key.

The Balk moves on in Whores. vein, all low end, and a few Jesus Lizard/Denison type arpegiatted fifths for good measures until it erupts into wails of guitars and horns screeching. Cleansing breaths wouldn’t be out of place on a mid period Polvo record, with its dulcet celestial tones, dry as a bone atmosphere and creeping rhythm. The rhythm picks up and creepy loud breathing emerges before a wall of dissonant single note guitars play a slow transcendent metal passage, at which point the rhythm settles in and riffs wail and wallow you into a lull. You leave the arena with distorted drums, bells, and whistling feedback.

Manifestation of Grief is the final slow death march of low end feedback giving way to organ like wails of effected guitars and synths, followed by a harrowing passage of gloom and spoken words that wouldn’t be out of place on a Planning for Burial record.

Songs tend to be on the, shall we say ‘prog’ end of the time spectrum; clocking in at a minute to 8 minutes. And the all go on for only as short or as long as they need to, never letting the listener down by (as so often sludgey noise does) repeating a passage too long or not giving birth to a new direction.

In short, despite our warning, we LOVE this record. The atmosphere, the gloom, the precedents it takes its cues from, SUPERB. We look forward to hearing more in the future; too bad the limited record’s already sold out (we REALLY need to get to our reviews sooner from here on out!) This is why we do this.