SATAN ROSENBLOOM’S SPIRITED ENDORSEMENT OF ELECTRIC HORSEMEN FOR SCION’S NO LABEL NEEDED CONTEST

Although the editors of MetalSucks get a vote in he Scion No Label Needed Contest, the staff of MetalSucks, alas, does not. Thus, over the course of the next few days, each MetalSucks writer will post an endorsement for his favorite finalist for the contest. You can check out all the finalists, and vote for your personal favorite, here.

If the twenty bands in the running for Scion’s No Label Needed contest represent the future of metal, then we may as well jump ship now and start listening exclusively to Renaissance madrigals (Have you heard William Byrd? He’s the polyphonic-est! ). It’s not that these bands are all talentless, more that there’s nary an original sound in the bunch. Choosing amongst them amounts to picking whether you like Suffocation, In Flames, Black Dahlia Murder, Neurosis or Tool best.

That’s why I’m throwing my considerable weight behind Electric Horsemen, who at least have the good sense to crib from Eyehategod and Crowbar — well-cribbed Southern sludge generally retains the genre’s sloppy soul and untouchable heaviness even when they can’t touch their forebears’ songs. And a pleasantly seamy job Electric Horsemen do of conjuring up unwholesome bayou voodoom, even though they hail from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, seat of the state’s peaceable Amish community. The track they uploaded to the Scion contest page, “Milk Coma,” has that lazy Louisiana boogie DOWN (pun intended). The other tracks on their MySpace page are even better, showcasing bits of melody and through the groaning muck. Vote for these guys, if only because they sound nothing like their competitors.

-SR

Listen to and vote for Electric Horsemen here. You can also visit them on MySpace.