Band:	Horseback
Album:	Half Blood
Style:	Ambient Drone, Post-Rock
Release date:	May 08, 2012
A review by:	Doc G.

01. Mithras
02. Ahriman
03. Inheritance (The Changeling)
04. Arjuna
05. Hallucigenia I: Hermetic Gifts
06. Hallucigenia II: Spiritual Junk
07. Hallucigenia III: The Emerald Tablet

If anything can be said about Horseback, it's that they've achieved the almost impossible; they've taken a form of music that is generally difficult to get into, and made it accessible and digestible, without compromising the heart & integrity behind the whole thing.

Ambient, psychedelic drone/noise-rock. Now, I'm not sure about you folks, but with tags like that, it generally means you're in for something laughably pretentious...Or I should say you lack the intellectual depth and capacity for abstract thought which is required to enjoy such music. Horseback don't seem to have any such pretensions. Half Blood has to be one of the most earthy, organic sounding albums ever recorded. It's simultaneously filthy & gentle. Soft, flowing riffs played through sour guitar tones. Throw some organs underneath, some buzzing black metal vocals on top, and you've got yourself a tasty mold sandwich.

Yeah, it's got those incredibly zonked-out ambient droners like "Inheritance (The Changeling)" or the Hallucigenia trilogy, but it's tastefully paired up with other tracks with more tangible guitar work, which make up the remainder of the album. In other words, Half Blood is an album that works on two levels; music for sober people, and music for people who have clearly taken too many drugs...Or people who want to feel like they've taken too many drugs.

With Half Blood, Horseback have shown that accessibility is not arbitrarily a negative thing. This is a very creative album that doesn't pander to you with any instant-gratification type gimmicks, while it also doesn't alienate with a strict regimen of pretentious time wasting. Dark, trippy and engaging is Half Blood in a nutshell.