Aural Aggravation

Christopher Nosnibor

Recorded live at The Fulford Arms and streamed post-production as part of the venue’s seventh anniversary celebrations, Petrol Hoers’ performance was always going to be a must-see, and while there’s no way there can ever be a substitute for witnessing the spectacle first-hand, if ever a band was capable of conveying the eye-popping ‘wtf’ factor of their live shows via a recorded medium it was always going to be Hoers.

An overtly novelty band whose cover art – which invariably featured cartoon depictions of pumped-up horses with crudely-drawn phalluses – summed up the target level fairly accurately, it was a shock to none more than them for their last album Oh I Don’t Know, Just Horse Stuff, I Guess to be picked up by BBC 6Music. In the blink of a weeping third eye, they had a song about wanking being blasted out over the national airwaves.

The set opens with a massive slow-build, as crushing metal powerchords and epic synchs build up before powering into frenetic hardcore technothrash that rips the top off our skull.

‘Music! Is serious business!!’ yells the burly, hairy, horse-headed man wearing nothing else but tattoos and a pair of tight yellow trunks by way of an opening line. He’s right, of course, but how seriously can we take this? How seriously is he taking it? He – Dan Buckley, aka Danny Carnage is accompanied by a dude in a Mexican wrestling mask, accompanied by sheer vest and a pair of Y-fronts, and behind the synths and other electronic kit that generates the music, a third dude wearing a zebra mask.

‘I say petrol you say hoers!’ they chant shortly after. They’re masters of the slogan, and kings of the corn, and because of the masks, it’s impossible to tell if they’re actually managing to do this with straight faces or not. They clearly know that the whole thing is absurd, and are revelling in it, as they crank out a relentless barrage of HI-NRG pun-riven rave-metal insanity.

‘Help Me I Am in Hoers’ is another ear-bashing genre straddling grindcore/techno explosion, machine-gun drumming and wild (sampled / sequenced) guitar noise hammering in at a thousand miles an hour. ‘Only Fuels and Horses’ switches back and forth between bulbous trance and head-shredding industrial grind, while they list all the trials and tribulations of the physical limitations of equine existence om the stomper ‘#horseproblems’: ‘Have you ever tried to play a blastbeat with hooves?’ Well, have you?

Hoers live was always a brain-bending and mildly traumatic experience, but beamed into the homes of viewers in a blitzkreik of strobes and crazy fast-paced camera edits that are like early 90s TOTP on speed, this is something else. Credit to both the band and the Fulford Arms for really doing something different and something special here: it’s one thing to stream a live performance online, but entirely another to render it in such a fashion with such production – and to add to that, the sound production was absolutely fucking brilliant.

Having found online gigs something of a disappointment over the last ten months or so, it’s a joy to report that finally, I feel like I’ve attended a real event. And I’m going to have one hell of a hangover in the morning.