With their issue of Horseback’s The Invisible Mountain full-length, Relapse gets a shot at exposing a vital and relative newcomer to a wider audience. First released through Utech Records last year, The Invisible Mountain is a stylistic amalgamation pulled off with striking poise by Horseback, the band moniker taken on by Chapel Hill, North Carolina, artist Jenks Miller, who combines ambient drone and the occasional bout of stoner riffing with harsh black metal vocals. The Invisible Mountain is Horseback’s second full-length (Miller also releases material under his own name), and with four tracks all over six minutes long, it’s an album that takes its time unfolding but has a sense of immediacy nonetheless.

In many ways, it’s saved by the mix. Were Miller’s vocals not relatively buried and were the ambient guitar layers not brought to the fore, The Invisible Mountain would be completely intolerable. As it is, fans of Grails and post-metal types will find plenty to latch onto with Horseback. I wouldn’t go as far as to call the music experimental, because Miller isn’t really doing anything that hasn’t been done in any of the styles he’s toying with and melding, but on a conceptual level, Horseback could be breaking new ground. Opener “Invokation” doesn’t seem to be anything special, just a doomy riffer with some thick bottom end and rolling drums, but when Miller comes in with the vocals, it gets obvious real quick that Horseback isn’t just another post-doom outfit. Think darker Wino guitars with Attila Csihar singing over them and you’ll have some idea of where “Invokation” is going.

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