HB are three members of underground rock titans Hey Colossus who found time between their mothership's engagements to churn up a raucous festering mess of goodtime noise, the third and latest of which, The Making of Junior Bonner, is out now on Riot Season Records, and has actually streamlined the template honed through the preceding Hungry Dogs Will Eat Dirty Puddings and Summer Tombs. Previously their sound, as typified by the unhinged choogle of Crab House, a simple tale of being devoured by giant crabs, was akin to a cave-dwelling horror that might lure you into darkness and there rend your mind and body. Since then Tim & Roo Farthing and Joe Thompson have traversed the savage seas where doomed sailors season the cabin boy (the deranged stomp of Landlubber) and the rocky road of existential horror (the elegiac title track of Summer Tombs) to arrive at the comparatively slick attack of Junior Bonner, the sonic equivalent of stranger with a wicked gleam in their eye beckoning you over with the promise of some cheap whizz only to disembowel you and run off with your wallet - at least you'll die with the sun on your face.
These are tight, brutal riffs chopped out across snarled tales of tough luck and tainted meat. There are angular desert-rock leads but the pace is too fast to write them off as stoner rock. Tim isn't averse to switching from laconic croon to death-metal gargle at a moment's notice, but it's never just metal, it's never just anything except awesome.
They're touring now, so hit a gig if you can. As I learned watching them play shows with Dead Meadow and Endless Boogie, they're a lean mean boogie machine on stage too.
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