The House of Assassins
"Your Days are Numbered"
LP
Obsolete Media
Genre: rock, country, underground
rock
Pittsburgh, USA
Nov 21, 2008 |
This impressive slab of vinyl brings me back to the glory days of
underground rock. Pittsburgh's The House of Assassins weave
pedal steel into hard-boned rock ala The Dream Syndicate,
Dead Moon, and Killdozer. Perhaps it's the vinyl talking,
but this is the type of thing I'd expect to find reviewed in Puncture
or Option circa the late eighties. Side A combines raunchy guitars and
rough, Michael Gerald-meets-Steve Wynn vocals to produce
gritty rock music inflected with a country flair. The proceedings have
a disshevelled quality to them, attacking the ears like a toaster
dragged under a bus. This means the emphasis is on chaos rather than
melody, although the songs are sufficiently hook-y to achieve the
warmth of familiarity over repeated encounters.
Side B gets considerably weirder, be it the psychedelic space-rock
of "White Light" or the Giant Sand-esque approach employed by "Hutcherson
Ave." In between the two, there's a raunchy cover of The Kinks'
"Muswell Hillbilly" and an impassioned if
tiresome Killdozer exercise, "All
Horses are Assholes."
Your Days are Numbered is a
strange but satisfying rock record with an old-fashioned appeal to it.
Few bands are making music like this today, and if gritty,
unconventional country-rock sounds like your bag, be sure to pick this
one up.
the house of assassins' myspace
85%
Matt Shimmer
[Vitals: 9 tracks, distributed by
the band,
released 2008] |