Howl – Rat Helmet: Double EP

Howl – Rat Helmet: Double EP
(Bat-Cave Productions)

Reviewed by Ambient Light.

On confirming an interest in reviewing this CD, we were sent a video clip from Howl rehearsals, in which the band storms through an ear-splitting cover of Joy Division’s ‘Shadowplay’, while the drummer discretely projectile-vomits off to one side of his kit and carries on playing. Any ordinary band wishing to assist reviewers might supply a press kit. But this is a band whose merch page on Bandcamp offers fans a Genuine Howl Sock, “guaranteed to have endured heavy use by at least one of the members of Howl”.

Howl are an unruly gang of hairy miscreants from Sydney, Australia, whose stylistic leanings include deathrock, glam, punk, post-punk/proto-goth, and trace elements of certain metals. In the tradition of The Birthday Party’s ‘Mutiny’/‘The Bad Seed’ compilation, Howl’s ‘Rat Helmet: Double EP’ brings together their 4-song ‘Rat Helmet’ début from 2013, and a second EP-length session recorded live in the studio earlier this year, fleshing it out to an 8-song mini-album for wider release. Clocking in a little below the 40 minute mark, the CD has just been issued on DIY gothic, post-punk, deathrock (etc) label/distro Bat-Cave Productions in Wroclaw, Poland, whose substantial back-catalogue includes releases from Twisted Nerve (Scotland), Pawns (US), Sierpien (Russia), Totenwald (Germany), Disjecta Membra (New Zealand) and many others.

New Zealand audiences might be familiar with Howl frontman Andi Lennon (vocals, guitar) and sideman Tommy Webster (guitar) from Sounds Like Winter, whose visits to Auckland and Wellington during 2015 and 2017 established a growing local fanbase (see: Sarah Kidd’s review from Auckland 2017). Live audiences on either side of the Tasman will also recognise Lennon and Webster’s energetic performances as highlights of Sounds Like Winter’s shows; an energy that’s even more prevalent with this band. The guitar partnership in Howl in fact predates Andi and Tommy’s enlistment with SLW, and ‘Rat Helmet’ offers many-a-glimpse at how that existing dynamic in turn became one of the latter band’s many strengths. Tommy took his leave of SLW around mid 2017, which was more than a little disappointing, but not before leaving his mark on the band’s first two albums, most notably last year’s ‘Sticks and Stones’. And as the cliché goes, one door closes and another one opens – or in this case, two. Collaboration between Andi and SLW founder/frontman Ant Banister has come to the forefront of that band’s output, the yields of which are unmistakable. Meanwhile, Webster’s departure seems to have driven he and Lennon back to Howl together with renewed vigour. Importantly, although both bands fit loosely under the ‘dark post-punk’ umbrella, and Lennon’s theatrical gothic-glam vocal styling will be familiar to fans of ‘Sticks and Stones’, Howl is an entirely different beast. The sound is far more jagged, raw and energetic, and is infused with the band’s anarchic sense of humour and spontaneity. And while that’s certainly the prevailing tone to this record, it’s not without contrast, as in the more contemplative, bittersweet feel to tracks 4 or 5.

Lennon’s camp vocal affectations throughout give plenty of overt nods to Rozz Williams, and to some extent Andi Sexgang, with occasional inflections borrowed from Tim Curry and Richard O’Brien in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. That haughty sense of melodrama finds a perfect counterweight in the band’s otherwise blunt and thoroughly unpretentious attitude to playing. Naturally, Lennon and Webster’s guitar work has parallels with their other output together, but here they utilise grittier, overdriven tones, typically ramping up the rhythmic pace. A fairly even split in the stereo mix does very simple but effective justice to the interplay between them. The rhythm section, comprising Phil Reeves (bass) and Peter Benedet (drums), powerfully urges Howl’s more raucous tendencies onward into the fray. Reeves’ bass takes a driving, melodic and versatile approach, akin to early UK punk and post-punk. Benedet’s drumming is a highlight throughout, and often shows the influence of US hardcore, thrash and European proto-deathmetal, but is equally at home with his bandmates in post-punk/batcave/deathrock territory.

Opening the original ‘Rat Helmet’ EP is the title track, one of the faster songs in the set. Propulsive guitar riffs lead the charge, following trails formerly blazed by Tony Iommi, Rikk Agnew and Mick Ronson; soon to be joined by nursery-rhyme vocals and one of Peter Benedet’s most blistering workouts behind the kit. The band’s one-live-take-in-the-studio approach, with only the vocals being overdubbed separately, is highlighted by Phil Reeves’ otherwise solid bass performance letting a couple of misfires and bum notes slip through, which only serves to enhance the untamed and impulsive feel. Track two, ‘Squall’, is an immediate standout. It’s loosely in the vein of early UK ‘positive punk’ and proto-goth, with brittle, rusty-razor guitar lines cutting into one ear; shimmering harmonic chimes ringing in the other; dominant neo-tribal tom-toms thundering down the middle; and a fluid assemblage of bass hooks weaving their way up and down the neck. Those spiky early eighties influences are offset by a groove that could’ve been lifted a full decade later from a Porl Thompson/Boris Williams-led Cure jam, while ascending chord progressions and histrionic vocals continually build tension in a similar vein. As the song moves toward its end, Webster provides a dissonant, eerie lead guitar passage, softly choked beneath watery effects, before drums, bass and rhythm guitars speed up and run at each other in a noisy collision that knocks everyone out cold.

‘Quivering Pulse’ weighs in heavier, with corpulent ‘70s UK glam riffage stomping its way across a spring-loaded rhythm section. Mid-way through there’s a gait transition, from a hefty trot to a swift gallop, and back again. The song carries a ‘dead man swinging’ feel, familiar from some of Lennon’s contributions to the Sounds Like Winter songbook (e.g. ‘Ishmael’s Bones’, ‘Sticks and Stones’ or ‘Television Dream’), but with fewer obvious references to swampy Australiana. Instead, ‘Quivering Pulse’ takes a short, rollicking gambol through the dark, seedy gutters and back alleys of glam rock. ‘Costumes’ is the fourth and final track from the original EP, providing the most variation from the sound established by the preceding tracks. Its frequent ebbs and flows alternate between introspective brooding and wider sonic panoramas, with guitars leading the way from pensive restraint into more expressive, cathartic spaces. Without closely scrutinising the lyrics, there’s nevertheless an inescapable sense of Lennon taking an “all joking aside” stance here; a moment in which to reflect on themes of disillusionment, and to shed some light on the darker underside to an already cynical wit. In the theatre of Howl, perhaps ‘Costumes’ refers to the face of tragedy that lurks behind every fool’s disguise. Coupled with an anthemic sense of melody, it’s the song on the EP that draws the most emotive response, as if seeking to divulge depths not always apparent in the often-facetious songwriting displayed elsewhere.

In the main, ‘Part II’ of the Double EP ultimately sees the band ploughing through a set of rough and ready cover versions, but not without notable exceptions. The first of these is ‘Double Barrel Scorpio’, which begins to lift the pace again, but continues along the seemingly more expressive trajectory of ‘Costumes’, while also smoothing the transition between the cover sessions and original content. Previously recorded by Sounds Like Winter for their first album, ‘Initiate’, the Howl rendition isn’t strictly a ‘cover’. A part of Howl’s set for some time before it accompanied Lennon and Webster into SLW, Andi wrote ‘Double Barrel Scorpio’ several years prior to either band’s formation. Each band’s distinct interpretation serves the song well. The SLW version brought more studio sheen, a loftier sense of grandeur, and played up the melancholic Disintegration-meets-Closer atmosphere, replete with flickering guitar effects and Ian Curtis-like vocals. As expected, Howl strip it back to its raw ingredients, inject some extra grit and velocity, and in doing so demonstrate that the song’s evocative, melodic guitar lines will shine through just as intensely without need of any surface polish. It’s one of the highlights of the record overall, and certainly the best track from the recent sessions.

Plunging back into the riotous din, the remaining covers are fun, but it’s immediately obvious that all three would be better suited to a live setting, and on record they tend to feel a lot like filler. One-by-one in quick succession, as if by conveyer belt, Joy Division’s ‘Shadowplay’, The Cure’s ‘Killing an Arab’, and ‘Deathwish’ by Christian Death all receive the Howl treatment, which consists of running through fairly straight-ahead covers played a bit looser, faster and noisier. To their credit, none are mere carbon copies of the originals, and all sound unmistakably like Howl. But none attempt to add quite enough of a new or interesting dimension to the songs that might warrant recording and releasing studio versions. The strongest performance of the three is probably ‘Deathwish’, which succeeds in ramping up the original by several notches but could just as easily be accused of being the nearest facsimile, not least because of Andi’s Rozz-inspired vocal. The weakest link is ‘Killing an Arab’, which suffers from the band scribbling outside the lines, in place of thinking outside the box. Striking something of a middle ground is ‘Shadowplay’, which is pretty cool in isolation, but nothing to write home about. The best way to appreciate these last few tracks, however, is simply to take them at face value as bonus mischief, rather than anything definitive or essential to the tracklisting overall. We’re given a handful of extra songs that the band clearly enjoy playing together, without expending too many fucks in the process, and as a candid snapshot the whole record successfully captures the spirit of Howl. And, as an expansion on the original ‘Rat Helmet’ EP, the new sessions are worthwhile for ‘Double Barrel Scorpio’ alone, not to mention the (SPOILERS AHEAD) “hidden” track.

Closing the record out, ‘Celtic Thrust’ is tacked on the end of ‘Deathwish’ after several minutes’ silence. If The Last Dance are the self-anointed “Spinal Tap of goth”, then ‘Celtic Thrust’ proclaims Howl as the Bad News of deathrock, like a codpiece over the spandex tights of this CD. A wholly spontaneous practice-room jam recorded live on the spot in glorious lo-fidelity, with Tommy Webster sitting in for Benedet on drums, ‘Celtic Thrust’ is christened in impish tribute to a certain Swiss metal band. And in keeping with the sort of referential fan-service normally reserved for Sci-Fi nerds, the real Easter Egg for deathrock devotees is that the track containing both ‘Deathwish’ and ‘Celtic Thrust’ clocks in at 13.34.

‘Rat Helmet’ is an invigorating introduction to one of Australasian deathrock and post-punk’s brightest prospects going forward. From the most recent generation of dark post-punk revivalists to proliferate on the DIY band scene just a couple of short years ago, many have all but vanished, as suddenly and conspicuously as they first began trending, leaving lifetime diehards to get back to business. Accordingly, Howl look to be getting more and more active on the live circuit, and there’s talk of a whole swag of new songs currently in the works. Already obscure in its original domestic EP format, with ‘Rat Helmet’ now expanded and reissued internationally as a very limited pressing, it seems Howl may be clearing the path for what’s to follow.