ALBUM REVIEW: Palehorse - Looking Wet in Public

By: Hunter Young

Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 01/07/2016
Label: Truthseeker Music

Wonderfully acidic and bludgeoningly sludgy, Palehorse's new creation, “Looking Wet in Public”, is just magnificent.

“Looking Wet in Public” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Half Lizard / Half Lizard
2). Miserable Heroin Addict vs. Jehovah's Witness Guy
3). Lambs to the Laughter
4). The Shower
5). Terrifying Japanese Coldplay Documentary
6). 1893

The Review:

You know when the grungy metal gods have sent you something magnificent when you start to feel the music leave a greasiness on the skin, because it's that or my soap has gone on strike. Wonderfully acidic and bludgeoningly sludgy, Palehorse'snew creation, “Looking Wet in Public”, is just magnificent. At once suffused with a gloriously dirty sound, a punishing delivery, and vocals that absolutely rub my throat raw, it's a tour de force of what the underground can put out! A tour of the force of a sludge pipe, perhaps, but a force of some sort for sure!

Make no mistakes about Palehorse's intentions; as soon as you hit play you shall be assaulted by massive sonic cinder blocks. There are no warnings, just scratching, a word or so, and then you're being dragged down old asphalt by your pant leg (“Half Lizard, Half Lizard”). Palehorse vomit forth a sound that is a fight for survival, it could be described as fraught, like learning a bandsaw as an instrument. Songs like “Miserable Heroin Addict vs Jehovas Witness Guy” (a shoe in for song title of the year) rely on nothing so fancy as technical playing, individual notes, or articulation of the fingers; no, instead you have chords that buzz modulate like a twisted mechanical beehive. The band mixes violence, mechanical darkness, and just a retching out of pure emotional strangulation in the form of vocal delivery. The longest track, which is also the most plodding and slow, titled “Lambs to the Laughter”, is a perfect example of what these guys do best, and that's peel the layers off your brain slowly, like an onion, with the most jagged plastic knife possible.

“Looking Wet in Public” does have lighter moments, such as the first half of “The Shower”, which then deforms into a nightmarish effects driven track that will take you to many edges, musically. They suffocate with sonic intrusions and modulate you into a blob of human goo; it's well crafted debauchery given form, and slicked with production, allowing you to experience the throes of scuzz like a slow drip. With “Looking Wet in Public”, Palehorse have given outlet to a violent, raw album that should delight any fan of extreme music down to their toe socks. Enjoy without shame, as they scratch that fix for you.

“Looking Wet in Public” is available here

Band info: facebook|| bandcamp

FFO:  Ghold, Horse Latitudes, War Iron, Loinen