For all the great and easily accessible straightforward albums which appear every month sometimes one wants and needs to be stretched and asked questions of. “Half Blood” the new album from North Carolina band Horseback is one such release, a testing imaginative and evocative creation which works the senses and emotions.

Horseback is the creation of guitarist, vocalist, and producer Jenks Miller and follows on from his previous acclaimed albums including “Forbidden Planet” and “The Invisible Mountain”.

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Hailing from North Carolina, Horseback is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Jenks Miller, best known in indie and americana circuits for his work in bands like Mount Moriah, Un Deux Trois, In the Year of the Pig and Bellafea.
Recently picked up by Relapse Records, Miller’s second full effort under the name of Horseback “The Invisible Mountain” was originally released on Utech in 2009 and presents us a sound that is intriguing, creepy and almost cinematographic. In fact, it could be the ideal soundtrack for some bizarre western movie signed by a partnership between John Carpenter and Sergio Leone, or better yet that outrageous and violent western “El Topo” by Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Chilean director who Miller recently admitted in various interviews to be an important influence for Horseback.
Opening track “Invokation” sets the mood for this 38-minutes, four-track record with repetitive, simple riffs and harmonies that exude an 80’s obscure and hypnotic feeling throughout. It’s impressive how Miller can perpetuate a single monochromatic riff throughout a whole song without sounding dull or uninteresting.
The bass-driven “Tyrant Symmetry” offers more the same, while the title theme falls somewhere between a less bluesy/folk Earth and Iron Butterfly’s psychedelic ambient.
One of the most defining characteristic of Horseback are the vocals, the lo-fi shrieks of Miller places them close to black-metal standards, like some evil demon trapped in the desert wilderness instead of a Norse forest.
Last song “Hatecloud Dissolving into Nothing″ offers a very different side to Horseback though, an ambient noise song that nods at acts like Tangerine Dream and Boards of Canada.
All in all, “The Invisible Mountain” is a must have for those of you who like their music wicked, bizarre and cinematographic. (8/10)

Band info: www.myspace.com/horsebacknoise
Label info: www.relapse.com
For fans of: Earth, Om, Grails, Swans

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