Personally, I’ve never been super big on the whole experimental side of metal as it always leads to weird creations that more often than not lead to me disliking what I’m experiencing. Last time I was impressed by the experiments of the innovative was Tome of the Unreplenished who showed me a harsh and unforgiving void. This time, it is Drug Honkey who’s taking us on a menacing and haunting trip through the realm of death itself.
The first thing I saw with Drug Honkey, in general, had to be that there were immense amounts of influence from Godflesh permeates every single part of the music. Which parts? All the parts! Drug Honkey clearly grew up listening to Godflesh, and that, in turn, inspired them to create this band, and I have nothing but utter confidence that their upcoming record, “Cloak of Skies”, is their best work to date. Imagine taking death and doom metal, making it extremely atmospheric, and adding psychedelic elements here and there to really take things over the top. Imagine a soundscape that’s naught but red, black, blood, death, a whole bunch of what-the-fuck, and sights that will forever be burned into your brain. But much like a horrific car accident, one cannot simply look away. You just gotta keep looking at it no matter how unsightly it may be, but “Cloak of Skies” is truly a remarkable journey that’s so different from what we “normal” people consider music that it’s simply mind-boggling. There are vocals but they’re so far off you can’t lock in on them, the guitars and bass are dissonant beyond description, and the drums create a morbidly hypnotic tone that cannot be ignored. Drug Honkey has by no means created a friendly experience with this record, but holy shit is “Cloaks of Skies” something to be heard.
It’s as if all of death metal became an incredibly ambiguous and abstract painting that made no sense whatsoever, but damn does it really capture the cruel imagination of the human brain! Drug Honkey’s brutally creative image has taken the form of something that no one on the entire fucking planet could’ve seen coming. Experimentation with metal has very closely reached a peak with “Cloak of Skies”, and if I had to present my two favorite experimental records of this year . . . Drug Honkey would easily be in my top two.
“Cloak of Skies” releases on May 5th via Transcending Obscurity Records!
LISTEN to the title track on Bandcamp here (which features a SAXOPHONE?!?!?!?!).
LIKE Drug Honkey on Facebook here.
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