8th May 2020
Christopher Nosnibor
One thing’s for certain: lockdown is galvanising musicians to be innovative in ways that are truly unprecedented. Yes, I said it. The advent of the Internet may have revolutionised / fucked the music industry, and while in a bygone age, home taping didn’t kill music and neither did Napster at the turn of the millennium, iTunes and Spotify, in their attempt to create a new model that monetised downloading managed to inflict new levels of financial harm on the artists they were supposed to benefit.
Having recently found unexpected favour and airplay on BBC radio with a song about wanking lifted from last year’s Oh I Don’t Know, Just Horse Stuff, I Guess, York-based premium purveyors of relentless hoofcore had to do something while unable to don horse masks and dresses in public. And this is what they’ve done.
The Hoers’ press blurb explains it all best, and mostly in block caps:
‘21 Viral Hits is a collaboration between Petrol Hoers and vocalists across the country who answered his call. The initial pitch was pretty straightforward:
"DO YOU WRITE SONGS OR DO SHOUTY VOCALS? ARE YOU ANGRY ABOUT PEOPLE HOARDING BOG ROLL? DO YOU WANT TO CONTRIBUTE TO AN ALBUM OF RIFFS AND BLASTBEATS AND SHOUTING TO TRY AND RAISE SOME MONEY FOR CHARITY?
WE NEED PEOPLE TO WRITE LYRICS AND RECORD VOCALS FOR SOME SHORT SHOUTY SONGS PLEASE HMU IF YOU CAN HELP :3"
but soon resulted in a group of vocalists/lyricists putting pen to paper and then voice to microphone (or in some cases smartphone…) to lay down vocal parts while Hoers worked as a one-horse grind machine to write and record as many tracks as possible. Song subjects were agreed, production advice given and shrieking beast of an album was pieced together that was a triumph of remote collaboration.
With original cover art by Cat Bowen as the finishing touch, this album looks as massive as it sounds.’
And it’s true: it is absolutely fucking massive. And not just because it’s got 21 tracks on it, most of which are themed around this moment in time, as titles like ‘2 Metres’, ‘Lockdown’, ‘Great pasta famine of 2020AD’, ‘Wash Your Hands’, and ‘Selfish Cunts’ evidence.
Because it’s a Petrol Hoers album it’s brimming with high-octane, hundred-mile-an-hour bangers. But while previous excursions have increasingly favoured technoindustrial stylings, with thumping drum ‘n’ bass grooves and gnarly synths dominating the arrangements, 21 Viral Hits sees Dan Buckley and his myriad virtual collaborators return to the Hoers roots and goes full on grind / thrash metal, and it’s a filthy, furious guitar assault, and the longest song is two minutes in duration, on the nose.
‘Locusts’ rages at the panic-buying, trolley-filling, shelf-clearing fuckheads. ‘Insanitizer’ reels off a shopping list of unavailable items: ‘Pasta’s been taken / Bread is scarce’ is the core of the verse.
It’s rather less humorous and irony-filled than anything the Hoers have done before, but it’s an album of the times, and as a relentless, thunderous, metal racketacious capturing of this brief but terrifying moment in modern history, 21 Viral Hits fulfils its objective in delivering a gnarly, shouty, sonic battering that leaves you feeling bewildered, but no less bewildered than five minutes watching the news.
AA
Aural Aggravation 