Horseback

The music of Horseback is a treasure that, last year, caused one prominent loud-music critic to write that hearing the band’s monumental The Invisible Mountain “was and is a life-changing experience for me.” So far, it’s been mostly an obscure treasure, limited to releases on small experimental labels and with virtually no touring history. 

Indeed, Horseback’s appearance at Hopscotch marks one of the first times its mastermind, Jenks Miller, will bring the full-band sound of The Invisible Mountain to a stage. Replicating the sound—and the effect—of Miller’s best recorded work to-date likely won’t be an easy task. The album exists in a world where Jack Rose’s pensive blues and Xasthur’s insular black metal coexist with Earth’s patient Spaghetti Western yarns and The Stars of the Lid’s drone. Post-metal begins to describe it, but hardly does it justice.

Still for all its sonic references, Miller has crafted—on each of his recordingssomething entirely his own. In fact, it’s music often best relayed by describing its effects. Horseback’s debut, Impale Golden Horn, is a blissfully patient collection of harmonious drones that elevate and inflate, even as they move slowly, cautiously and contemplatively. The Invisible Mountain unravels like a novel, building tension and conflict through its first three cuts before releasing them in a redemptive resolution with the fourth and final piece, “Hatecloud Dissolving into Nothing.” 

Many of those who’ve sung The Invisible Mountain’s praises turn quickly to “Hatecloud Dissolving” as the album’s immediate standout, even though there’s very little that’s immediate about the 16 and-a-half-minute cut. But it’s a gentle and emotionally encouraging piece that rewards the listener for traveling alongside Miller through the trials and tribulations of climbing the titular mountain. 

Later this year, more ears will be given the opportunity to join Miller’s quest when Relapse Records, one of the nation’s most prominent heavy labels, re-releases The Invisible Mountain, and helps deliver a future follow-up. But how many, outside of the Hopscotch Music Festival audience, will be fortunate enough to hear Horseback’s aural monuments of drone and meditative post-metal? Wait and see, we guess—a fitting dogma for listening to Horseback. —Bryan Reed