Drug Honkey - Hail Satan (2005)

It's important to note that I'm coming at Hail Satan in reverse, having already been smitten with both of Drug Honkey's latest albums Cloak of Skies and Ghost in the Fire, and also digging the record Death Dub prior to those, though that one took me several spins to really start to appreciate. This is actually the sophomore for the Chicago narco-doom fiends, and naturally a lot more raw than the aesthetics they'll continue to develop as they progress. That's not to say this doesn't share traits in common, or that the later efforts lose the sense of repulsive primacy established on the earlier pieces, but here it's not simply a disparity in composition but also in the more primitive production being exhibited. With an impending re-release through Hohlraum records, however, it was actually cool to travel back and experience this with the knowledge of how it would develop.

Hail Satan might have an overt, provocative title, but in truth is not thematically abstracted from other Drug Honkey efforts. Subjects like drug abuse, depression, and institutional rebellion are legion, and often represented with extremely minimalist lyrical patterns that care about little more than getting their point across (i.e. "Reject Religion"). These actually work to the benefit of the songs, because Honkey Head's performance here is positively manic, the true driving force of the disc, and these succinct and straightforward lines becomes mantras that he can repeat over the dissonant mire of the instruments, altering his pitch between barks, growls,  nasally cleans, and other tones that head even further out into the deeps, stretching at the outer membranes of sanity. Slathered in reverb and other effects, they definitely become the most pronounced feature on the disc, possibly a little loud in the mix on some sequences, but critical to narrating the tempest of emotional turmoil that the album is created to deal with. I stress this because for some listeners, they'll prove the make or break factor for immersion into the album as a whole, never shying away from an overload of eccentricity.

Musically, the album is also really simple, with dingy and distorted guitars splayed out in largely patterns of open notes, thinner and buzzing rather than dense and choking, and sometimes striking some hideous and disturbing dissonance, which creates a contrast against the more predictable notes ringing out. Bass-lines are leaden, almost industrial grooves, and the drums limp along in a drugged, hypnotic certainty that allows all these conflicts to crash above them and alongside them. Add to this a bevy of electronics, ambiance and mix effects, and depth is created even where there is an utter lack of complexity. Some tunes are less structured than others, or creep along at a funereal doom pace not unlike an Esoteric, where others revel in an archaic industrial metal framework redolent of Godflesh or Treponem Pal. The deeper into the album, when you hit on a tune like "Silver Lining", affairs become even stranger, like layers of thick and angry skin have been peeled back and you're entering another level of confusion. The whole experience has a live, improvisational backbone, perhaps with a few initial directions that are then left to mutate into bedlam.

It's cool. It's not Cloak of Skies cool, nor Ghost in the Fire cool, because there are added layers of exhilaration and texture on those records. But, being forewarned about what sorts of ugly and hallucinogenic aural hues the Chicago quarter tend to choose to paint with, I certainly connected with the aggravation and despair that swells up in every single track here. The album feels like you're being slowly dragged, at some heightened level of intoxication, through the streets of a filthy urban sprawl, possibly by someone who just mugged or drugged you, listening to the sounds of abuse, addiction and anxiety being shouted from the higher story windows of dank alleys, occasionally being nudged by street refuse, manhole covers half-ajar, or splashed through the piss and rain and whatever the fuck else has mixed in with them. Exhausting, entropic and effective.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (I found them down in flames)

https://www.facebook.com/drughonkey

Drug Honkey - Cloak of Skies (2017)

2012's Ghost in the Fire was such an overwhelming paean to human suffering that I doubted in advance there was any 'lower' plane onto which Chicago's Drug Honkey could drag its brand of drudging, urban, emotional doom. I wasn't necessarily wrong with that prediction, but where Cloak of Skies might not exceed its predecessor in some raw torture quotient, it more than compensates with a superior sense of direction, atmosphere and experimental minimalism that creates both a haunting and mesmerizing sonic trip that also had a surprisingly warm side to it, like that feel you get once an Oxycodone has finally hit peak plasma concentration and starts to spread over whatever ails or addiction forced you to pop it into your mouth in the first place.

On the surface, it seems simple, with monolithic, if familiar, slogging chord patterns that feel as if you're watching some rusted, moldering cityscape collapse in on itself, only the occasional flashes of melody created by higher-pitched droning guitars make it seem like the entire scene of decay is being bathed in a radiant, unforgiving sunlight that shines in through the shattered windows, missing bricks and girders on the building frames. Definitely some hints of acts like Godflesh and Jesu here, or on the heavier end of the spectrum the Australian Disembowelment and their highly regarded album Transcendence into the Peripheral. But these comparisons can offer only a starting point, because the specific noises and nuances Drug Honkey mixes into its aural amphetamine don't feel redundant to anything I've really encountered in the past, and I think the industrial, noise and drone influences only strengthen the overall package of this recording so that it crushes you like a hundred simultaneous dystopian nightmares, an album that anyone who survives deserves bragging rights to. There are even saxophones provided by Bruce Lamont which blend eerily well into the composition, as loose as that might seem, reinforcing its urban facade.

For all their minimalist structure and nature, the raw riff progressions here are quite excellent at how they tap into the primacy of the form, as in the depths of "Outlet of Hatred" where a few chords slice through the morass of guttural vocal sustains and other hallucinatory effects that drive the entire, ugly juggernaut forward. Ambiance and feedback are used as sweltering bookends to pieces like "(It's Not) The Way", where Head Honkey exchanges some of his wealth of snarls and gutturals for a clearer, deep, dreary vocal mantra that echoes over the spacious clamor. There are places at which the vocals completely steer and disgustingly define the stoic, sonic backdrop, as in "The Oblivion of an Opiate Nod" which is one of the most grueling and impressive pieces on the whole record. Guitars reach perfect levels of saturation on both the lower ends where they collide with the distorted bass scrawl, and the higher, dirty tones that waft out through the occasional smog-o-sphere. There is nothing clean about this album, it's like a warm bath in rank water, piss, and who knows what else, and yet's it's still a pretty comfortable use of your time.

I'm not completely convinced that the Justin Broadrick remix of "Pool of Failure" (the album's first track) is required to order to round it out as a complete experience, even if it serves as a sort of reprise. So you could cut Cloak of Skies off at at around 44 minutes and be none the worse. But that said, it's pretty fucking cool to have Broadrick himself hack away at one of your tracks, and he does succeed in making what is one of the record's more straightforward pieces a little weirder and more disheveled, while amping up the recognition of his own Godflesh aesthetics. In fact I might like this one slightly more than the original version, but I think it works better when you recognize it as a bonus track and not a core component. Otherwise, I think this is Drug Honkey's best material to date, already on par with Ghost in the Fire about midway through and then hitting that one-two knockout climax of "Opiate" and the title track and dialing it home. Also was impressed with Paolo Girardi's cover art, which seemed a little out of the ordinary for the Italian, but really captures the sounds on display very well. Then again, Drug Honkey is no ordinary client, and the weird, woeful atmosphere they create with just a sliver of ironic grace as well worth pursuing as the end of whatever substance binge you find yourself engulfed in.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.25/10]

https://www.facebook.com/drughonkey

Drug Honkey - Ghost in the Fire (2012)

Upon my first exposure to Chicago's Drug Honkey and their 2008 album Death Dub, I have to admit I just wasn't prepared for the group's level of psychotropic sonic depression and ritual abuse, but this time I have come armed and ready: a bottle of vodka sits on the upper left corner of my desktop, next to a careful arrangement of painkillers and other substances I'd rather not discuss. My last will and testament has been prepared, notarized and sent off to the family attorney. I called my parents and loved ones to hear their voices for what might be the last time, and I broke out and loaded a handgun, just in case I needed a fast, decisive exit from the emotional oppression I was about to endure.

Several days later, I emerge fully destroyed from Ghost in the Fire, but thankfully the safety never came off the pistol, and the mixed liquor and pills weren't enough to kill me thanks to what I can only assume is some remnant of youthful metabolism. I realize my prolonged existence might disappoint a great number of you, but then, this band hasn't broken up yet. Ghost... is the band's fourth full-length excursion, and surprisingly more accessible than its predecessor, but it continues to wreak its crushing lessons upon the listener with baleful distinction and raw certainty. Some will dub this funeral doom, or death/doom, but in truth there are so many eclectics ingredients to the group's compositions that it defies any simple attempt at categorization. You can make out traces of sludge, psychedelic ambiance, even hardcore barking and a conversation, narcotic bred drawl infused with the harsher, growled vocals. The band certainly crawls along at a sluggish general pace, but where other groups like Skepticism or Esoteric provide trance-like hallucination and escape, these guys speak from the depression of the bottle, the heroin needle, the crackpipe and other urban vices.

Structurally and song-wise, this disc surpasses their last in overall quality because it's better able to grab the listener by his brow and then force his/her face directly down into a bowl of retch and torture. The huge, fuzzy bass lines will trip out your speakers within minutes, the drudging lower end chords serve as skeletal support for the eerie, minimal melodies over "Order of the Solar Temple",  the drums throw a lot of fills at you to help break up potential monotony, and and 'Honkey Head' Paul Gillis instantly captivates you with his expressive, vocal variation that ranges from a morbid, guttural abomination to a clearer, persuasive bark, all saturated in echo and reverb enough to rattle around your ears and brain like bullets that failed to exit through the back of your skull. The architecture of the music might not seem inherently complex or intricate, but it doesn't need to be: its harrowing texture leaves the same imprint on your heart whether you're listen to it the first or twentieth time, like an unlikely union of Disembowelment, Mindrot, Neurosis, Today is the Day and Rollins Band.

But Ghost in the Fire exceeds even this praise, thanks to the psychiatric variation coursing through each of the cuts. Songs like the title track or "Weight of the World" revel in their droning, dissonant discourse while Gillis crashes around the stratosphere like an extreme metal Leary, while the thuggish bass lines lurch along like primordial swamp predators, slowly closing on their sustenance. There's a subtle sense of bruised glory in pieces like "In Black Robe", where the riffs seem mildly more consonant and uplifting, and even the drier tones in tracks like "Five Years Up" compensate with the strong balance of percussion, unwashed feedback and the natural ambiance created through this crossroads of aural desolation. Not a song on this fucking album will fail to envelop you in mournful tatters, like some dopamine ragman coming to lay claim to your soul, and it's hands down one of the most compelling and simultaneously repellant arguments for human extinction you are likely to have all year, a masterful monolith of suffering and spiritual debilitation. Avoid at your own risk. Experience at twice that risk.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10] (they said I was blank)

http://www.facebook.com/drughonkey

Drug Honkey - Death Dub (2008)

There are really two ways to look at an album like Dub Death, the fourth from Chicago's wayward demons Drug Honkey. You could easily dismiss this as a godawful, random experiment in sporadic, convulsive rocking noise that grows dimmer and darker as it struggles through 42 minutes attempting to actually kill you. Or, you could take the proper dosage of lethal, abusive substances and crash yourself on the nearest level concrete plain, staring at the nothing of your past, present and future as Drug Honkey provides the soundtrack to the slippage of all your vital energies, out through your skin and into the haunted atmosphere. I probably fall somewhere in between these two poles in my opinion of the material: while I certainly find this a lot more calculated and clever than it seems on an initial playthrough, only half of these tracks gripped me as much as I'd have liked, and that's coming from a person who plans on one day commiting suicide to Merzbow before the Commies and unicorns can get him.

To start, how does one describe the sound of Death Dub? Is it doom? Perhaps not in the traditional sense, but you will certainly very fucking doomed after listening to it. Is it psychedelia? Improvisational noise? A set of showtunes for the gathering of all negative human emotions in existence? Yes, yes, and yes. What artists would you compare its sound with? Many, and none. The thick, pummeling bass lines and general, crashing industrial sheen reminds one a lot of Godflesh, or the noisy angst rock of Zeni Geva. The spaced out influence found in a few of the sparse, discordant rhythms could channel anything from Voivod to Yob. The depressive, doomlike atmosphere borders on Esoteric levels, though the songs are not that painfully long. But even this wide array of potential influence cannot even begin to contain the insanity that is Drug Honkey, so color them original.

"My Sins" sounds like a satellite feed from a planet of man-sized alien cockroaches, speaking over CB radios in a carnal, forgotten language about what to do with the human herd they plan to cultivate. Of course, the actual lyrics are far from this, but I'm just trying to give a hint as to how fucking out there this band can get. Vocalist Honkey Head (also known as Paul Gillis of Morgue Supplier, Asscavern and other crazy bands) is himself performing an entire psychic tapestry alongside the freebase, bass-line thunder and haunting, sinister atmospherics of the guitars. He will range from disgusting, turbulent barks to higher pitched junkie wails and often somewhere between the two at a tone similar to (but less repetetive) than early Broadrick. Really, the vocals are being used as much as a blunt instrument to brain the listener as they are to deliver their stark, desolate poetry, and trust me, though the band's lyrics and song titles might feel too pedestrian for the horrifying racket they produce, there is a level of awareness and poetry within.

Since we, bruised up
Everything is pleasure
Since you, bruised her
I am the loser

Just think about these simple lines for a spell? Pretty interesting. "The Devil Lasts Forever" is a little more bottom heavy and convulsive, like your old lady howling at you through a drug infused haze after you've done something, very, very wrong. Like YOU ARE GOING TO FUCKING PRISON TO BE RAPED UP THE ARSE wrong. "Death Threats" is a sparser experiment, stretching for over 8 minutes against a tortured void of oppression. The vocals here are imperative and warming company; like if you were on a moon base alone for decades and suddenly you would accept just about any noise from a human being or robot as your guiding light and companion, so too do you accept this screaming and snarling as your only friend in a very fucked up, endless night.

But it is only after this point at which the album really starts to take off, with the completely fucked and awesome slow churning butter ringing of "Communion". A guitar chugs ever slowly, and from the disgusting mutes flow spacey, jangling noises like satellite signals communicating off giant space dishes, while Head Honkey howls lyrical abuse at the holy trinity which would even Nietzsche cringe. "I Can Not" is another of my favorites, very slow to start, but the warped bass lines and ringing clean guitars merge with the super guttural static vocals, you can't but feel that your transition to another world is complete, an awareness of all the fucked upness of your environment now branding you alien to the folly of human emotions. "China Black (Heroin Pt. 2)" is a live cut recorded at the Double Door in Chicago, with an amusing spoken introduction that leads into a trancelike freeform rambling. Although interesting, I didn't get into it as much as some of the studio material.

I'm your god
I fucked your life

The final two tracks of the Death Dub are a cool nightmare-scapish cover of Pigface's "Burundi", from their 1997 double album A New High in Low, which would probably drive Martin Atkins to stab his eyes out with his drumsticks; and "Who the Fuck?", which is just over a minute of scathing, incendiary noise that feels like the entire atmosphere of the first 5 tracks sped up in a blender, a microcosm of absolute fucking terror with a semi-catchy vocal repetition. While curious, neither of these tracks really do justice to the originals that comprise the first 34-35 minutes of the album, and they are best approached as a separate entity.

Drug Honkey is very much fucked up, and their style is only going to appeal to a handful of people, the kind of people we'd all be very lucky to know, since they are capable of mining the basest level of art from even the most vitriol-injected sources. I happen to be one such person, but I'll be honest, for the first month I listened to this album I could not come up with the words to accurately describe it, and I thought of it as a convincing and cruel effort that I would very much wish upon my enemies. Funny thing about actually paying attention, is you start to see through your own limitations to a broader world beyond, and it is in this world that Drug Honkey inhabits. Death Dub is really interesting, and really good, at least for the first 5 tracks. The remainder of the material is compelling, but only the live tune jibes well enough with the material leading up to it. Don't be misled by the rather free-form, loose feel of the compositions; if it is something outlandish you seek in your extreme music, you might want to fire your dealer and suscribe to Drug Honkey instead.

Highlights: highlights, skylights, big swirling lights, and possibly the last lights you'll see from the emergency room table.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10] (I cannot read you)

http://www.myspace.com/drughonkey