After spending half of a decade or so fighting man-sized chickens for money, living inside maximum security old folks’ homes and arguing in the ever so sexy language that is Klingon, Dublin-based riff merchants :Hounds: have just released their debut album Spacemad. It’s a beguiling slice of insanity that’s every bit as brilliantly bizarre as their tongue-in-cheek biography.
Featuring two members of the sublime Spook Of The Thirteenth Lock, the record is an 11-track, fuzz-fuelled walk on the weird side which regales listeners with tales of pastry-making and more (‘Nightbaker’), backed by a soundtrack of eerie, guitar-based oddities (‘Q Where Are You? A Streak No. 3’) and spiraling, neck-bothering chuggers (‘Night Of No’).
Opening with the sinister strains of the hypnotic ‘Longboat’, :Hounds: sucker us into a sense of easiness with their two-minute long, ‘Staring at the sails of a longboat down’ mantra, before hitting us over the head in the second half of the song with a mental, metal freak-out that calls to mind Smashing Pumpkins in their pomp. From there, the quartet carve out their own musical niche over the course of 30 minutes. Highlights include ‘No Brakes’, which boasts an awesome riff coupled with a Neil Fallon-esque syncopated rock sermon from singer Allen Blythe. ‘All Hail’ is a welcome slab of blood and thunder which signs off with a beautiful coda that serves as the calm after the storm. Pretty much every track holds its own on this short but sweet record.