Høst - Del En Høst

Høst was a short lived American one man band, playing, as described by the label at the time, some mix of Black Metal and Grunge. Despite the name and titles in Norwegian (and the super cool runic logo), the project hailed from North Dakota. As evidenced by the lyrics on "Jera"...

Norway by the moon and the sea
Every night in my dreams
 

...the guy just happend to love Norway. Can you blame him, tho? As weird as this combination of genres may seem, it actually works pretty well. Without this information, of this quite unique blend (which I don't think has ever been tried before? Or even after?), listening to it, you might as well classify it under the "Black'n'Roll" unbrella/sub-sub-genre/kind of thing, much popularized by Satyricon's "Now, Diabolical" (IMO a pretty good record undeserving of the hate) and Carpathian Forest too, I guess. But you can kinda hear the Grunge influence, it's not a stretch. 

This the type of band that, if gotten as popular as Deafheaven (😷) would surely be accused of being hipsters and receive a lot of hate, BUT... Høst's intentions are genuine, the music is fresh, exciting. Not surprisingly, the Norwegian second wave influence is HUGE here. But, besides the aforementioned Satyricon, this reminds me more of Taake, specially circa the self titled album era. And this is riff heavy! Like, fuck, man... most songs have an average 7 minutes duration, and are constructed out of piles and piles of riffs, heavy rocking riffs, one after another. You will hear a lot of that typical Norwegian BM minor third riffage, but played in a groovy Rock manner.

Yes, this groovies hard! While the guitar does this gnarly, heavy, melancholic riff salad, the drums stick to more rhythmic territory, instead of blasting away and copying Celtic Frost when slowing down. I believe on "Jera" it kinda does some blast beats, but I could be wrong. That being said, they're not basic, they're busy, all over the place, as creative as the guitar lines. Also, for having this typical BM production, you would expect for the bass to be completely buried, but nope! It even has some lead parts, again bringing Taake to mind.

Besides the Rock-ish attitude of it, the Grunge bit manifests itself more in the lyrics... sort of. I would argue it's more akin to Screamo bands, such as Orchid and Pg.99 (also with some of that BM ritualistic vibe), but whatever. It deals with some tragic events (r*pe and murder), it seems to be one long sinlge story (a conceptual album if you will) told by the perpetrator's point of view. Can be corny and heavy-handed at times, but I've seen way, way worse. And with vicious, over the top, and unintelligible vocals as these, it hardly matters.

Anyway, this rips, and deserves much more attention! Get it now!