It’s been five — count ’em, five — years since Norwegian heavy rockers Honcho released their third album, Battle of Wits. If you’re unfamiliar, the band got started in 1998, have been featured on numerous compilations since then, including the 2011 assemblage Cowbells and Cobwebs (review here), and their 2002 debut, Corporate Rock features one of the most quintessentially stoner rock album covers of all time. Look it up. Not at work.

I don’t know for how many of the five years since Battle of Wits was issued the video for “Clovers” has been in the works, but the impression I have is at least the last couple. A delay is understandable. Even digital, the animation in the video is painstakingly fluid as it follows a protagonist down through what, if it isn’t a metaphor for depression could just as easily serve as one, complete with dancing bone monsters and all. The clip is hypnotic and the song is correspondingly moody and contemplative, the five-piece of vocalist Trond Skog, guitarists Håkon Eng and Halvor Berg, bassist Steinar Knapstad and drummer Kenneth Andersen building it to a resonant apex by the finish of its seven and a half minutes.

Honcho posted some in-studio photos earlier this year, and though it was six between 2004’s Burning in Water, Drowning in Fire and Battle of Wits, five years seems like long enough for them to at least have started to put a fourth long-player together. Whether or not that’s the case, I’ll keep an eye out, but as “Clovers” demonstrates, there’s clearly some mileage left for Battle of Wits as well.

Video follows here. Please enjoy:

Honcho, “Clovers” official video

The five horsemen of the apocalypse ride again. Manuel Ferrari, an internationally renowned animator from France, have spent three years of his life making a hypnotic and emotional video for he Honcho song “Clovers”.

We would specifically like to thank Mr Manuel Ferrari, our main man in Amsterdam, for making all this possible, and for excellent artwork.

Credits:
Production company: Ambassadors
http://www.theambassadors.nl/
Director: Manuel Ferrari
Edit: Erik Verhulst
Sound: Rens Pluijm
CG artists: Manuel Ferrari, Alex Doss
Music: Honcho

Honcho is:
Trond Skog, vocals
Steinar Knapstad, bass
Kenneth Andersen, drums
Halvor Berg, guitar
Håkon Eng, guitar

Clovers is from our album “The Battle of Wits,” 2010

Honcho on Thee Facebooks

Honcho on YouTube

As a general rule, I try to avoid reviewing compilations, because either the review winds up being a list of the bands involved with nothing of substance said about any of them, or it’s promo-speak pushing an album by saying, “It’s good, you should buy it.” Finally approaching the Planetfuzz Records debut release, Cowbells and Cobwebs, which culls together a whopping 28 underground purveyors of heavy and fuzzed out rock over the course of two 14-track discs, the best I’m hoping for is a combination of both the above. Needless to say, I’ve been sitting on the review for a while, and for me to go track by track and analyze each song would (1) take too long and (2) make for a review of such length that no one would ever read it, being of no use to any of the parties involved – bands, label, reader or myself. To give away the conclusion early: It’s a quality collection with a bunch of previously unheard material that those who think they can hold their breath for nearly 160 minutes (each disc is 79-plus) of fuzz without drowning in it would do well to check out.

A few familiar names pop up on the first disc, appropriately labeled Cowbells. Bands like Orthodox Fuzz, Arrowhead, Ride the Sun, Honcho, Gate 9, Sungrazer and The Grand Astoria are situated next to newcomers Mangoo (who might win the award for best band moniker on the comp), Loimann, Sons of Giants, Propane Propane, Audio Dream Sister, Moab and Spelljammer, and the highlights are just about evenly split between bands I knew going into Cowbells and Cobwebs and bands I didn’t. Sungrazer’s jammy “Zero Zero” shows there’s ample reasoning behind their having been signed to Elektrohasch, and I didn’t think much of it for its opening, but Propane Propane’s “It’s Alright” wound up one of the high points of the collection for its drum sound alone. Norwegian rockers Honcho check in with a track called  “Earth” from their 2010 self-released Battle of Wits album and the song is positively gorgeous in that post-Soundgarden Euro-stoner kind of way, while just a few tracks earlier, Ride the Sun show why their name has been ringing out so far over the last year or so with the previously-unreleased “Ride.”

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