Empty Body, the crushing new full-length from Wellington, New Zealand-based post-metal unit SPOOK THE HORSES is out now via Pelagic Records.
Following the calm and sublime People Used To Live Here, Empty Body rears its head with distortion levels cranked up, tempos sped up, and songs condensed and stripped down to the bare, ugly essentials. Indeed, Empty Body comes as a brutal wake-up call within the rampant COVID-19 fatigue and an unexpected surprise in almost every regard. “We’ve always been both a heavy and a quiet band. An entire album of our prettier, more bittersweet inclinations demands a reply of our most aggressive and confrontational. The pendulum must swing back the other way,” comments multi-instrumentalist Callum Gay.
View the band’s previously released videos for “Inheritance” and “Cell Death” below.
Empty Body is available on CD, LP, and digital formats HERE. Fans of Breach, Cult Of Luna, Converge, Trap Them, Old Man Gloom, and Baptists, pay heed.
Imagine a band where members can rotate between instruments, because every band member can play every instrument. SPOOK THE HORSES are such a band. And it is perhaps this multi-instrumentalism and virtuosity that explains the vast musical territory that is explored across the band’s four albums. While 2011’s debut album Brighter was defined by sweet post-rock crescendos, 2015’s Rainmaker was a much heavier affair. People Used To Live Here (2017) created an atmosphere of quiet desolation, raw and real, desperate and unsettling: the post-apocalyptic soundtrack to abandoned places, where people used to live, at one point in time, long ago.
“Since we started work on People Used To Live Here years ago we knew the album would need a follow-up that was radically different – almost spitefully different – if only to utterly refuse any trite suggestion that we might be “maturing” or mellowing out with time,” Gay explains. “We’d written the song ‘Self Destroyer’ (off Empty Body) somehow concurrently with the early People Used To Live Here demos and it had a sense of momentum to it that immediately engaged us. Once that energy was there it was an obvious choice for the next record, compressing our intuitive emotive peaks into raw forward motion. We all wrote collectively with the new focus in mind.”
“Empty Body probably still qualifies as ‘post-metal,’ but this time SPOOK THE HORSES‘ music has been injected with roaring, crushing sludge more than ever before. It’s comparable to the heaviest moments of Neurosis and Cult Of Luna or even to a little of High On Fire, and SPOOK THE HORSES make this long-lasting, overcrowded style of music sound fresh again.” — BrooklynVegan
“SPOOK THE HORSES make chunky, raw, brain-melting slabs of aggression that are sure to appeal to fans of bands like Neurosis, Cult Of Luna, and Old Man Gloom.” – MetalSucks
“Empty Body is post-metal without the waiting. With all but one track under 5 minutes, they had enough fantastic grooves and furious riffs banked to get around that pesky build-up time. With the drum and bass driving the energy throughout, the guitars are free to scatter dissonance and melody wherever they see fit. It’s a solid record, folks. My horses hath been spooketh.” – Toilet Ov Hell
“SPOOK THE HORSES made a courageous move by reinventing themselves completely, and it led to what is hands down their finest work to date. Empty Body presents the very best yield post-metal as a genre has to offer, and I’m confident that it’ll be a while until anyone comes even remotely close to the level of writing and execution to be found on this album.” – Everything Is Noise
“It is hard to describe in words what an epic sounding album this is, as while there are plenty of guitars there are pounding drums and New Order-style bass which take this to a whole new level. I am catching these guys in concert later this year, but until then I know this is going to be a regular visitor to my deck.” – Progressor.net
SPOOK THE HORSES:
Zach Meech – drums, guitar, vocals
Alex Ross – bass
Donnie Cuzens – guitar, synth
Callum Gay – guitar, drums, vocals, synth
Ben Dentice – guitar
Max Telfer – visuals
