Early Graves have had it hard. Coping with the loss of a bandmate, especially one as full of youth and vitality as their late vocalist Makh Daniels, seems like an insurmountable mountain to climb, and yet, these San Francisco boys have done their damnedest to overcome the worst. Red Horse marks their first recorded output since Daniels was killed in a van accident while the band was on tour with Funeral Pyre in 2010, and it paints the portrait of a young group that still has everything to prove to itself, if not to others. Hardened and honed by years of DIY touring and big-name support gigs, the songs ring true with real, agonizing pain and anger, felt on a more visceral level than your average emotionally detached death/grind crew can hope to scrape toward. On tracks like "Misery", "Death Obsessed", "Pure Hell", and the slow, sad collapse of album closer "Quietus", you can tell that they mean it, that every word and every chord has been ripped straight from the heart of their still-bleeding wounds.
Even when disregarding its backstory and focusing solely on the music at hand, Red Horse is impressive. It's a marked step forward from the kitchen-sink death/hardcore/crust/grind of their last LP, Goner, and a much more mature album overall. Early Graves haven't abandoned their many-headed hydra of influences, but they have figured out how to stitch them together into one cohesive blend. They don't sound like a mélange of other bands anymore; they sound like Early Graves, and that's a damn good band to sound like in 2012.
Red Horse sees them experimenting more with melody and the dynamics of soft and loud. Album opener "Skinwalker" begins with a lone, spidery acoustic lead that carries through the whole song even as it builds into Early Graves' customary vitriolic metalpunk maelstrom; the same device repeats on the melancholy, sludgy "Days Grow Cold", as their trusty old Swedish death metal influence thrusts itself into the spotlight. The aforementioned "Quietus" feels like a goodbye, its initial furor spiraling down into a flurry of clear, gently captivating melodic riffing, and all points in between the two bear the mark of the band's fresh willingness to step even further past the box they'd smashed through years ago. The production is as raw and grainy as ever, aligning them more closely with their crusty heroes in 1990s Memphis stalwarts His Hero Is Gone and Swedish death tone gurus Entombed than with any of their shinier, more processed peers.
New vocalist John Strachan, a longtime friend who also sings for the Funeral Pyre, had big shoes to fill, and he did a commendable job both preserving Daniels' legacy of intensity and bringing his own caustic touches to the mic. Situated high in the mix for maximum impact, Strachan's vocal performance comes across as lonesome, ornery, and mean. His delivery perfectly suits the often chaotic tangle of sounds that his bandmates delight in creating, clawing through the walls of noise with a scratchy, raspy bellow bred by hardcore punk and honed by howling mockery at the cross in his black metal band.
You've got to hand it to these guys. They pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, overcoming brutal tragedy and cutting loss. They refused to quit, and even managed to improve, remaining bloodied, but unbowed. This is their tribute to their fallen brother, and their statement of intent to the rest of the world. Early Graves are dead. Long live Early Graves.
