Grinding Metal

Photo by Don Dark

How much you like Whitehorse will probably depend on the length of your attention span. If you can't hold out between chord changes on Black Sabbath's song of the same name then you're probably fucked. Whitehorse are the metal pulse slowed to two beats per minute and drenched in reverb. One epic, droning riff can take a few minutes to end with the space between filled with crackles, static and noise barely bursting through to the surface. This is all punctuated by the delayed shrieks of a big scary bearded madman who you only notice is front-man after the band has built up twenty minutes of monumental doom. If you can make it through one of their 90 minute plus sets then you're a better man than most. Although I like being hit in the head real slow with a classy looking knuckleduster, I generally take the opportunity to duck if it's heading my way. VICE: Why do you guys play for so long? Pete: To make everyone uncomfortable…and we really like listening to ourselves. Why do you play so slow? We only have three riffs. If we played them all at normal speed then we would only have one song, and it would only be like, thirty seconds long. Are you aware that the length of your sets pisses off the other bands you play with? Are the other bands aware that we don't like them? We consider ourselves to be more important than anything else that is going on, so we do what we have to. We just wanna play with black metal bands but we don't know any in Melbourne. In Sydney there was a dude slow head banging the whole fucking set, but here, the metal heads don't seem to like anything slow. You have a reputation for scaring underage punk kids at Missing Link with your "craziness". Are you crazy? Obviously. This is why they keep me in the back room. Do you think the beard may have something to do with it? I have had a beard since I was twelve, dude. The delay pedal that you use for vocals makes you sound pretty insane. Hopefully. I have been looking specifically for a pedal that is even more deranged. One that would shed skin. MICHAEL BRAY
Whitehorse have a CD available at getonthehorse@hotmail.com and some record stores. By the time they reply to your email their new recording will also be available.