Sludge is what happens when hardcore kids play doom metal. Bristol’s Sugar Horse might not replace all the Black Sabbath with Black Flag on their new EP Truth or Consequences, New Mexico (Fat Dracula Records), but their anger owes a debt of gratitude to the bands who did.  This is felt on the volatile side of their good cop / bad cop formula. 

The album opens with a vocal chant mixed back into a big room reverb sound, which is slowly built upon. It does create enough suspense to leave you wondering how the rest of the album will unfold, and the second song  “Or” is an explosion of screamed vocals and aggressive pounding. This couples the energy of hardcore with the mammoth weight of sludge – more raw around the edges than the genre’s melancholy parent doom. The band ebbs back down to more of a post-rock mood for “Consequences”. They prove themselves very capable of crafting delicate guitar lines that drift out from the ambiance. The sung vocals complement this, with a croon belted out with the kind of emotive conviction I have not heard in this strain of rock since Dredg. 

 “Comma” goes back to deliberate staccato chugging, coupled with angry hardcore yells. A dissonant guitar melody gives the song more layers than your typical metallic hardcore breakdown. They switch into “Neu” right in the middle of the phrase that ends “Comma”, breaking their formula, rather than fading into more shoegazing post-rock they stick to heavy-handed riffs, eventually building up into a buzz of noise, to drone their way out.   

The last song “Mexico” is more rooted in sludging menace. The vocals scream to “inhale-exhale”, with something hypnotic to the apocalyptic din that carries this song. The album as a whole has a dynamic ebb and flow. Even with the more ambient flourishes coloring things,  fans of the more deliberate strains of sludge and doom will find plenty of compatible sonic ground. 

While the EP feels like at one point in the rehearsal space it may have been two longer songs that got broken up in the studio, this is ambitious work, particularly as Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico is not a full-length and this band deserves the credit for not taking the easy way out. This falls into the zip code of bands like Cult of Luna but with the hardcore fury of misspent youth. 

Buy the album here: 

https://sugarhorse.bandcamp.com/album/truth-or-consequences-new-mexico

8 / 10

WIL CIFER