(Hold on tight as Andy Synn takes us for a ride with the new album from Hundred Headless Horsemen)
Finnish quartet Hundred Headless Horsemen aren’t the easiest band to pin down.
Mostly this is because the group resolutely refuse to adhere to the normal conventions (or restrictions) of songwriting or genre, going so far as to describe their uniquely unorthodox sound as “Psychedelic Death Metal”, a term which, while certainly intriguing, practically raises more questions than it answers.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely a significant strain of Death Metal in the band’s DNA – though careful analysis will undoubtedly show that it’s more closely related to the Morbus Chron/Sweven offshoot than it is anything from the Floridian swamps or the Stockholm graveyards – but, whether due to natural selection or intelligent design, the sound they produce isn’t so easily classified.
Perhaps an even better comparison – or, at least, the best one I can come up with – would be to think of HHH as the Death Metal equivalent of their more “blackened” countrymen in Oranssi Pazuzu, a band with whom they not only share a love of sludgy grooves and psychotropic sounds, but also an almost pathological aversion to playing by the rules.
