With their new video, Houston bizarro heavy rockers Funeral Horse are more or less saying goodbye to their 2015 album, Divinity for the Wicked (review here), but true to form, that’s hardly all they’re saying. The clip premiering below for “Underneath all that Ever Was” starts off with a Stranger Things reference, digs into a narrative about a downer bureaucrat — played by drummer Chris Bassett — working a suicide prevention hotline and not caring, cuts suddenly to guitarist/vocalist Walter “Paul Bearer” Carlos on his phone waiting to shoot for his solo, and then goes back to Bassett‘s character drinking at his desk, only to be visited by Death, who very cleverly high-fives him, ending his life, and leaving a slew of distraught people on the other end of the suicide hotline.

Got all that? If so, you’re one up on me. Fortunately, director Larry Czach — who also worked with the band on their video for “There will be Vultures” (posted here) — was on it, but suffice it to say it’s very much Funeral Horse‘s thing to be on their own wavelength, so they’re right at home in “Underneath all that Ever Was” in addition to being part of a longstanding tradition of weirdo Texan noisemakers. The three-piece have a few live dates in the Lone Star State this month at which they’ll introduce new bassist Clint Rater, and then it’s back to preparations for their next full-length, which will presumably be out sometime before the end of the year, likely on Artificial Head Records. I’d make a prediction as to when specifically, but I think both the song and video below bear out the futility of trying to predict anything when it comes to Funeral Horse.

A few words from Carlos and Bassett follow, as well as the tour dates.

Please enjoy:

Funeral Horse, “Underneath all that Ever Was” official video

Walter Carlos on making the video:

Working on this video was an intense experience in that it was more like a movie production. We purposely wanted to make something that had more of a cinematic quality to it rather than standard band footage. At one point, we did have some live shots of the band, but that got scrapped in production in favor of the guitar diva scene. We decided on the song “Underneath All That Ever Was“ because it’s not only one of our favorites to play live, it’s one of our darkest topics… which fit with the theme of the failed suicide prevention consultant from the video.

This marks the second collaboration between the band and Larry Czach –- who produced the video for “There Shall Be Vultures” –- also from the current record. Larry has a long history in the Houston music scene -– going back to 1970 when he ran lights for psychedelic rock bands that came to town.

Chris Bassett on making the video:

It was a blast working on this video! We got to work on a lot of ideas to help bring the story to life. Working with Larry was a breeze. He listened to our ideas but also had some neat tricks up his sleeve for capturing the essence of what the story was all about. I think it worked out quite well.

Funeral Horse January Texas Tour (with Shadow Giant from Louisiana)
01/25 Satellite Bar (Houston, TX)
01/26 Black Monk (Corpus Christi, TX)
01/27 TBA (McAllen, TX)
01/28 Faust (San Antonio, TX)

Divinity for the Wicked preorder

Funeral Horse on Thee Facebooks

Artificial Head on Bandcamp

Artificial Head on Thee Facebooks

It’s been a while since I actually laughed out loud — “lulz’ed,” as the kids might say if anyone used past tense anymore — at a band’s video, but when Houston’s Funeral Horse get around to the monkey-drumming part of the clip for “There Will be Vultures” referenced in the headline below, yeah, I kind of lost it. The video, which is the first for a track from their recently-issued third full-length, Divinity for the Wicked (review here), has a couple guffaw-worthy moments, from its quickly establishing a running gag (about being gutted) to a J Mascis-looking preacher or may or may not have been one of the dudes from The Linus Pauling Quartet reading a gospel of Rush lyrics out of an LP gatefold. It is not by any means light on charm.

Ultimately though, there remains much more to Funeral Horse — the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Paul Bearer, bassist Jason Andy Argonauts and drummer Chris Bassett — than their willingness not to take themselves too seriously. “There Will be Vultures” is a brimming example of their genre blend, somewhere close enough to punk, to heavy rock and to noise to be arguably aligned to them, but not of any one over the others. The band’s comfort level in this between-styles forbidden-zone apparent in the ease with which they lean to the various sides on the record, but even more than that, it’s the fact that something underlying in their sound remains familiar in more than just that Sabbath-is-ubiquitous kind of way. They refuse to be easily categorized, and three albums deep into their tenure, they’re more in command of that refusal than ever.

The song itself is about four minutes long, and the video’s about eight, but settle in, because it’s worth the time.

PR wire info after. You know the deal. Enjoy:

Funeral Horse, “There Will be Vultures” official video

FUNERAL HORSE share Rush-Worshipping’-lick-shredding-monkey-drumming new video for ‘There Shall Be Vultures’ | Divinity For The Wicked out now on Artificial Head Records

Like a vision of ’80s post-hardcore punk rock, red-eyed and burning one in the back of Heavy Metal History 101, under the influence of The Melvins, Kyuss and Harvey Milk, Funeral Horse make music to gouge minds to. From album opener ‘There Shall Be Vultures,’ a track that straight off the bat (teeth flying) showcases one of the many strutting rock assaults the trio have become expert in peddling, Divinity For The Wicked throws open its doors to a wider world of distortions and digressions.

Leading the charge with ‘Underneath All That Ever Was’, a lumbering paean drawn in part from words found in a suicide note of one of Bearer’s co-workers which had gone unnoticed for several days pinned to an office bulletin board, this is Funeral Horse at their darkest and most pensive. The Tuareg desert blues of ‘A Bit Of Weed’, the funereal bagpipes that send off ‘Gifts Of Opium And Myrrh’ and slow cinematic burn of instrumental ‘Cities Of The Red Night’ suggest there’s more than meets the immediate ear this time around for a band already masterful in the delivery of unfiltered noise and heavy fuzz rock.

Following on from last year’s imposing Sinister Rites Of The Master, and the thunderous lo-fi highs of their 2013 debut Savage Audio Demon, amid a mass brawl of riffs, megaphonic vocals, blues and backwater proto-metal, Divinity For The Wicked stands as a humble monument to the marginalised and maligned. An album just waiting to be picked up and played by those that have chosen to drop out and dedicate their entire existence to the pursuit of volume.

Funeral Horse on Thee Facebooks

Funeral Horse on Bandcamp

Artificial Head Records

One thing I like about Texan weirdo-garage-heavy-punk-doom trio Funeral Horse is that if you were to go up to them and ask what is myrrh anyway, they’d probably tell you it’s a valuable balm, and then when you, in your best Terry Jones high-pitched exclamation shouted “A balm?!” they’d totally get the Life of Brian reference. I don’t know that for sure, not having done it myself — would be a long trip to Houston just for that — but it seems likelier than not given what we’ve learned about Funeral Horse‘s brand of deeply creative heavy rock shenanigans over the course of their two prior full-lengths, 2013’s Savage Audio Demon (review here) and 2014’s Sinister Rites of the Master (review here), that the gag may have come up once or twice while in the studio tracking “Gifts of Opium and Myrrh,” the closing track of their upcoming third album, Divinity for the Wicked, out on Sept. 15.

As with their last two outings, a prevailing lack of pretense rules the day on the new Artificial Head Records seven-tracker. Presented in a concise 37 minutes, Divinity for the Wicked expands the palette of guitarist/vocalist Paul Bearer, bassist Jason Andy Argonauts and drummer Chris Bassett, but keeps consistent in its atmosphere and deceptive lo-fi vibe, a rawness of presentation masking just how far the trip from the hooky opener “There Shall be Vultures” to the bagpipes that round out “Gifts of Opium and Myrrh” actually is. Along the way, a blown-out rocker like “Underneath all that Ever Was” surprises with an inclusion of Mellotron in its second half, and the tracklisting centerpiece/side A finale “Gods of Savages” makes a show of its near-metallic intensity prior to delving into organ melodies and a rush of sludgy punk.

Side B only offers more confusion for the unsuspecting, as the ultra-stoner guitar line that begins “Yigael’s Wall” stops dead three times before the song actually kicks in to begin its eight-minute build, so quiet by the time it shifts into the cymbal wash of “Cities of the Red Night” that one barely knows where the track before stops and the next one starts, a desert-y guitar line emerging to call to mind Brant Bjork‘s minimalist moments and offer interlude companionship to the shorter, Eastern-inflected “A Bit of Weed” back on side A, however many miles the caravan may have covered since then. When it hits, “Gifts of Opium and Myrrh” sets itself to the almost impossible task of drawing the various sides of Divinity for the Wicked together, Funeral Horse moving between shuffle-infused punker chug and noise-rock shouts to an angular, chaotic roll that finishes by crashing into feedback.

And if you want a real sense of the consciousness behind all the weirdo push and pull that Divinity for the Wicked‘s stylistic breadth plays out, take particular note of how smoothly that feedback fades into the aforementioned bagpipes that bring the song and the album as a whole to its conclusion. Suddenly it’s blazingly apparent that none of this stuff has happened by mistake, and Funeral Horse are a long, long way away from simply screwing around either in their writing or in the studio. It’s bound to catch some listeners off guard, but that’s been the risk they’ve been willing to take since their debut that has made their work up to now (and through now) so appealing.

It’s my pleasure to host the stream of “Gifts of Opium and Myrrh,” which you’ll find below, followed by some background from Paul Bearer on the track. Enjoy:

Paul Bearer on “Gifts of Opium and Myrrh”

“The lyrics were drawn from a book I found on the prophecies and letters of Grigori Rasputin. In the book, he mentioned how his spirit had lived for eons as a great consult to the most powerful leaders throughout the ages. I found the concept interesting and started extracting parts of the book into the song. The bagpipes at the end of the song came about after hearing them during my grandfather’s funeral. I found them to be so mournful yet powerful and had made a mental note to one day use them as a closer for a song/album as a nod to my grandfather and his Scottish heritage.”

Divinity For The Wicked by Funeral Horse will be released on 15th September through Artificial Head Records.

Divinity for the Wicked preorder

Funeral Horse on Thee Facebooks

Artificial Head on Bandcamp

Artificial Head on Thee Facebooks

You know why I like Houston trio Funeral Horse? It couldn’t be simpler: I don’t know what they’re going to do next. From their Savage Audio Demon tape (review here) to the 2014 follow-up full-length, Sinister Rites of the Master (review here), they’ve managed to stay unpredictable enough while still providing choice heavy groove-age that, in approaching the new song “Underneath all that Ever Was” — which is streaming now and you can hear on the player under the PR wire info below — I don’t really know what to expect from them, whether it’ll be weirdo ’70s stonerism, doomy rolling, or what.

They may well settle into a specific blend on the forthcoming Divinity for the Wicked, as the new cut proffers cohesive, Mellotron-inclusive doom riffery, but I wouldn’t necessarily count on it, and I like that. I look forward to getting an answer.

Cover art, announcement and audio, courtesy of the aforementioned PR wire:

Funeral Horse return with new album Divinity For The Wicked

Made up of frontman/guitarist Paul Bearer, bassist Jason Andy Argonauts and drummer Chris Bassett, Funeral Horse return to the fold this September with a brand new album Divinity For The Wicked on the Houston-based label Artificial Head Records.

Like a vision of ’80s post-hardcore punk rock, red-eyed and burning one in the back of Heavy Metal History 101, under the influence of The Melvins, Kyuss and Harvey Milk, Funeral Horse make music to gouge minds to. From album opener ‘There Shall Be Vultures,’ a track that straight off the bat (teeth flying) showcases one of the many strutting rock assaults the trio have become expert in peddling, Divinity For The Wicked throws open its doors to a wider world of distortions and digressions. Leading the charge with ‘Underneath All That Ever Was’, a lumbering paean drawn in part from words found in a suicide note of one of Bearer’s co-workers which had gone unnoticed for several days pinned to an office bulletin board, this is Funeral Horse at their darkest and most pensive. The Tuareg desert blues of ‘A Bit Of Weed’, the funereal bagpipes that send off ‘Gifts Of Opium And Myrrh’ and slow cinematic burn of instrumental ‘Cities Of The Red Night’ suggest there’s more than meets the immediate ear this time around for a band already masterful in the delivery of unfiltered noise and heavy fuzz rock.

Following on from last year’s imposing Sinister Rites Of The Master, and the thunderous lo-fi highs of their 2013 debut Savage Audio Demon, amid a mass brawl of riffs, megaphonic vocals, blues and backwater proto-metal, Divinity For The Wicked stands as a humble monument to the marginalised and maligned. An album just waiting to be picked up and played by those that have chosen to drop out and dedicate their entire existence to the pursuit of volume.

Divinity For The Wicked by Funeral Horse will be released on 15th September through Artificial Head Records.

Funeral Horse:
Paul Bearer – Vocals, Guitar
Jason Andy Argonauts – Bass
Chris Bassett – Drums

http://www.funeralhorse.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/FuneralHorse
https://artinstitute.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ArtificialHead

Funeral Horse, “Underneath all that Ever Was”