Customer Reviews

Hold Your Horse Is

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Spencer Seim and Zach Hill are on a mission..."Make noise with structure" is their credo and they actually get away with it. The musicianship on this, their 1st CD, is beyond-beyond the pale of what can be done with an electric guitar and drums...

If you're a Hella fan...check out their side projects. Spencer Seim's "The Advantage" is a kick. Spencer has arranged all of your favorite Nentendo 16 bit tunes on an album..."Castlevainia" being my favorite.

Zach Hill can be heard on 'Team Sleep' (Deftones off-shoot) and "Crime and Choir" Albums.

Just-a-note--

Before there was "Hella" there was the band "Legs on Earth". They recorded one album "Lasers and Saviors" (para-sight.com) which Melody Maker called "legendary"...Rumor has it that it may be available on Amazon soon...I have a copy and it lives up to its reputation.

i'm not a fan of the name of this band o_0

but..
here's the thing:

intensely technical drumming can be put into an album in bad ways, and in good ways. this is good.

drummer zach hill [possibly not a human?] manages to pull off mind blowing structures in the midst of a chaotic, yet very well put together album. the duo do a hot job of balancing eachother out. it makes me want to run around in circles.

very stimulating. something tasty and new with each listen.

This album is insanely brilliant and will introduce you to one of the greatest bands in the 21st century, Hella. I'm sure many people are turned off by their almost incomprehensible structure, but there's so much to love here. Even after 40 listens, I'm still finding more to love about them. I can't even imagining learning to play these songs.

If you want something completely unorthodox, I highly recommend these guys. Spencer and Zach coordinate so well that it sounds like at least four people are in the band. But no, it's just them two.

I love "Biblical Violence", "Republic of R&R", and "City Folk Sitting, Sitting".

This album is, without a doubt, the most jaw-droppingly molten slab of prog-rock since Don Cab's equally otherworldly What Burns Never Returns.

A friend of mine introduced me to this by wordlessly dropping a tape (yes, a tape, they did exist) into a player, grinning and walking away. The cheesy synth intro of D. elkan issued forth, leaving me to think ennhhh... and continue working until Biblical Violence reached out of the speakers and said "Hello" like a brick. Needless to say, in that brief moment, I was hooked.

In the repeated listens since, I'm not simply impressed by the ridiculous technique Spence and Zach display (especially Zach, like Damon Che sped up to eliminate the space between the beats, yet still rhythmically contained, yow!), but by how there are definable elements of melody, harmony, etc. contained within the fury. Traditional verse/chorus/verse song structures exist even within the most abstract of the songs here, strengthening the sense of these pieces as compositions, rather than mere spastic freakouts.

Highlights for me include the aforementioned "Biblical...", and "1-800-ghostdance", "city folk", "Been a long time, cousin", but really, the whole album just shines. Continually amazing and rewarding, you should already own it. What are you waiting for?

If you have ever enjoyed the sweet sound of percussion instruments this is an album for you. This band from California will knock your socks off. This amazing drummer (Zach Hill) is accompanied by a very innovative guitarist (Spencer Seim) deliver a non-stop heart pounding sound that is hard to keep up with. The choice in lacking in a vocalist is clearly replaced with organized noise. This is truly music art at its best.

Utterly confusing and brilliantly amazing at the same time. This album will change how you view music and will redefine how you view guitar and drum playing. Take in moderation. (Also reccomended: NYC's Touchdown.)

Sick, jamming, flamboyant but at the same time ridiculously catchy math-rock. The drummer must be on all the most intense pharmaceutical drugsknown to mankind as you simply can't play tihs stuff in a sober state bcuz no matter how skilled you are it would only sound mechanical and processed; just look at the legends like Mitchell, Baker or Moon. Keep IT leeglized!

Fans of Ruins, Upsilon Acrux, early Don Cab or Iceburn will eat this up like the daily cornflakes.

Also recommend for all teh Crimheads, mad scientists and just plain folk with GOOD TASTE in music.

Hella is what you get when you take about 4 seconds of The Who, John Williams, and Ravi Shankar, and send them into a teleporter so they all materialize in the same place, totally messing each other up. Intense. The few seconds of silence between each song is like the calm before the storm. Hella is to most rock bands what Chicago-style pizza is to New York-style pizza. It's a lot harder to develop a taste for it, because it's just so big and full of varied and sometimes conflicting tastes and textures, but in the end it's a lot better. Zach doesn't really play the drums, it's more like he explodes all over them, hitting everything at the same time twice. If this reminds you of a certain muppet, you're not far off. He actually looks a lot like animal, with his wild hair going everywhere. He has the kind of talent that makes you want to quit any and all artistic endeavors. Not to detract from Spencer, whose guitar rifts are the musical equivalent of MC Escher: patterns emerge only after you listen for quite a while. And I use the term "patterns" loosely, since everything changes so fast. Math rock rocks.

this is such a cool cd, you have to buy it, man. i mean, like, seriously dude. its so good.

but really, you have to buy it.

you never get any of it until you see them live. and you get to see those crazy kids all wiggly.

i'm usually not a fan of anything rock these days. i'm more an ex indie-rocker that picks up on a few records here or there and checks them out. but this is one of the most amazing cds i've heard in a long time. beautifully written, massive, tight, fun music. incredibly complex when you get into time signatures and things of the sort. it really hurts my brain to think about this record in technical terms. if you're looking for a mind blowing record, why not pick this up? what? you don't like your mind blown?