Single of the Week: Ho99o9 – ‘Blood Waves’

It’s Monday, you feel like shit, you’re quite possibly still suffering the repercussions of the weekend, you had to get up early, you’re at work, a whole week of monotony is stretched out before you and it seems to go on forever. It’s Monday.

It’s here then that Single of the Week comes in to not just snap you out of it, but grab you by the shoulders and shake you violently whilst screaming in your face. Now, whilst that may not sound immediately pleasant right now, it really is. You see, that shake and scream comes courtesy of New Jersey duo Ho99o9 (pronounced horror), who exist at the point where hardcore rap meets hardcore punk and the fuck/fight it out. It’s hard to tell which – it’s probably a combination of both.

Ho99o9’s latest single ‘Blood Waves’, and its appropriately intense accompanying interactive video, are the perfect antidotes to the drab and mundane grey of the working week. Especially one at the tail end of winter clinging on and not letting spring do its thing. The video is all strobe lights, UV paint, neon voodoo, torn clothes, graffiti, freak outs, a mess of bodies, an off-kilter punk gig, trashed instruments, and what appears to be a wedding dress. The track itself is no less vibrant or unhinged.

Taking elements of industrial and the noisy end of the electronica spectrum, ‘Blood Waves’ then just proceeds with beating the shit out of them with crossover thrash riffs at varying speeds but always remaining relentless, regardless of the pace. When you add in a vocal that verges on demonic possession in places as it delivers colourfully violent imagery, you realise that Ho99o9 are about as subtle as makeup applied with a shotgun (Simpsons references, my bread and butter). However, that’s the point, this is chaos, this is anarchy, this is fun. Dark, dark fun.

WAKE THE FUCK UP! IT’S MONDAY! GET MAD! GO POSTAL!

EDIT: Cultured Vultures in no way condones or encourages the act of going postal. Please don’t.