Single Review: Horror in Clay - Bring Out Your Dead

 

With their 'Live From Toad Hall' E.P arriving on June 4th, Ryan Doyle Elward listens to the current single 'Bring Out Your Dead' and give us his thoughts. 

The latest single 'Bring Out Your Dead' from New Zealand based Horror in Clay is in many ways a shimmering memory of My Bloody Valentine's 'Loveless' or  'Souvlaki' by Slowdive. Steady, droning lyrics float on big and washy fuzz, finishing off with a broadcast bit that’s at once both sobering and yet further trance inducing. That’s all to say: they’ve forgotten nothing and then some in their recollection of the shoegaze-days atmospheric and that soundscape for a mind adrift.

Horror in Clay confounds expectations with their new single, given that it is in such stark contrast to their 2019 self-titled E.P, which was resplendent in its bleakness. Full of tracks truly intoxicating in their unease, the album is jarring and composite, binding adjacent genres like the stitch work on Frankenstein’s face. Late 70s raucous punk antagonism meets Christian Death mellow drama, making everything sung a middle ground between provocative attitude and horror/goth vocal cadence.

'Last of the Summer Whining' and 'Mare’s Nest' are stripped down and simple, with prominent bass driving through blooms of noise, and where this, added to the ethereal chanting, comes off like music for a procession of Satan worshippers. 'Bring Out Your Dead' retains some of that bass heft and procedural effect, but by comparison it is softer, brighter, less angular and more fluid.

                                    

'Bring Out Your Dead' plus a few previously released singles, such as 2020’s 'T.U.X' (hear above), appear on 'Live From Toad Hall', out June 4th on Leeds based label MUZAI Records.. So, the EP will still be pulled in a few directions it seems, but this latest single indicates an intriguing shift in their work: it is exciting to get something different and still get what you want.

You can follow Horror in Clay on Facebook and buy their new E.P through all good services. As ever, we recommend for you to buy it through the MUZAI Records Bandcamp to help support band and artist directly.