The revolution has been a long time coming.
It has been over thirty-five years since Anthrax ode to the Beastie Boys ‘I’m The Man’ laid the foundations for the much more widely celebrated and successful crossover collaboration with Public Enemy, ‘Bring The Noise’. Since then, integration of beats, metal, black and urban musical cultures has been threatened, and, despite a burst in the nineties (Pitchshifter, Atari Teenage Riot, et al, as well as the appropriation of The Prodigy into our world, and releases like Nine Inch Nails’ Fixed – all on a much more mainstream and palatable style than the hardcore destruction of Ho99o9), and sporadic standalone artists in between, it is only as we stumble through our modern-day hell with albums like Code Orange’s Forever and acts like Backxwash that it seems that the ideas and opportunities of such fusion are being revisited with violent intent.
Announcing themselves midway through the 2010’s with a series of incendiary live performances, including pushing Napalm Death on the Dogtooth Stage at 2016’s Download Festival, the one criticism of New Jersey / LA duo Ho99o9 had been that their song-writing had yet to fully capture the collective of influences and align the fury and vitriol of their lyrics and live approach into coherent bursts of musical output, even allowing for a background born from punk and hardcore and the associated deliberate shunning of traditional songs, the spotlight is shining on second full-length release Skin (DTA) to see if that gap in their resume can be bridged.
Producer Travis Barker’s day job in Blink 182 could be misleading in terms of pointing to a more polished approach. To think so would be to overlook Barker’s full resume and interests, and the integrity of the Ho99o9 pack. Indeed, first-track proper ‘Battery Not Included’ puts paid to any such misconceptions, a feral rage over a thrashing riff, with pounding percussion taking this into Ministry on acid territory: a drop down peaceful lullaby middle-eight serves only to add to the intensity when things kick back in. ‘Bite My Face’ follows, featuring the most aggressive Corey Taylor vocals since Subliminal Verses and takes a similar route, letting rip with a punked up first half, before the heat is turned down, only to lurch into a slab-heavy stomping crush throughout the final third.
But this wouldn’t be Ho99o9 if further elements weren’t explored, as pairing of ‘Slo Bread’ and ‘The World, The Flesh, The Devil’ see Eaddy’s guitars withdrawn and minimal beats take the mantle; rapping guest Bun B breaks things up on the former, before the vocal rage of theOGM returns over a minimal beat backdrop on the latter. ‘…Speak Of The Devil’ and its Reznor drawl over an industrial throb brings things back up into the schizophrenic ‘Skinhead’; a chaotic cocktail that veers and slams between Black Flag and Misfits punk, Code Orange sludge-rage, and a chilled jazz outro including a spoken word guest-slot from Saul Williams.
‘Lower Than Scum’ is a one-minute grind seethe that the aforementioned Napalm would have been proud of, ‘Devil At The Crossroads’ has a slinky, light groove, then ‘Dead or Asleep’ brings back the guitars to power us home.
Always moving, jumping between stalking the pray and violent predatory attacks, usually within the same song, Skin enhances and progresses the Ho99o9 legacy and output in a way that manages to feel uncomfortable, aggressive and still coherent despite its wild lashings and scattergun smashes, annihilating the flaccid criticism that Ho99o9 don’t have songs.
They have them in spades… spades they’re using to smash your skull in.
Buy the album here: https://ho99o9.com/
8 / 10
STEVE TOVEY