Tusmørke – Hestehoven [TRANSPARENT VINYL IMPORT Norway head rock 2023] – New LP

Winch: I think a lot of folks who only occasionally venture into head rock tend to go more for the Deep Purple/Black Sabbath inspired stuff and avoid anything that reeks of Hobbits, livestock, wizards and fairies, but while I really rarely venture into any post 1970s head rock and rarely even venture back to that junk from the 1970s, avoid all but maybe 10 head rock albums from any era, for some reason I at least appreciate bands who just go ahead and jump headfirst into head rock, this band clearly doing that, no progressive metal here, no punk attitudes, giving us something that doesn't even belong on the green noise site...like they are giving a semi-stiff middle finger to people like me...to stores like green noise...to punk rock!...if it was 1976 i'd say screw you but it's decades later so I say good for you, you crazy ass norway fucks! clearly inspired by the bands that make me scream THIS IS THE SHIT THAT TELLS US WHY PUNK HAD TO HAPPEN! And there's nothing I hate more than rock bands with flutes! So why would I'd admire them and support them. I don't know, just get a big kick out of anybody embracing themselves and the music of their fordes and great-grandparents...and also they don't give a rat's ass about pulling in US/Uk audience with english lyrics. It ain't my thing, but they still make me smile and feel a bit happy. I mean look at that band photo: that takes some gonads to do that. While I've seen probably thousands of shows, unless you count 1970s $7.50 ice-rink shows with Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, or Rainbow, I don't think I've ever even been to a head rock show (maybe Iron Maiden tour circa '84 would count, but I think that's more like metal and I mainly paid the $8 to see Waysted), but if it was outside in a field and they put me on the guest list, I'd sit in the grass and watch these fuckers play their flutes and watch the women wave fairy dusk and those ribbon hoops! No you wouldn't winch! Okay maybe not, but still... prog-rock on, you glorious bastards!

"Norway’s most far-out and unique prog band is back! This album is not for the faint of heart. Like some great Babylonian harlot, the sinfully sweet sounds held within this record will deny no one, but they extract a great price: There will be no turning back should you proceed on this wretched path and cut your way through the thickets so green, for the path is fraught with danger and temptation. Proceed and you might find yourself sucked off, as it were, to a strange fairyland where every bush and clearing is gushingly alive with the brazen bacchanals of satyrs and nymphs. Continue and you will find yourself in a world where chance encounters of mildew-encrusted adult magazines, carefully stashed away in the shrubs are nothing short of erotic mysteries reminiscent of ancient fertility cults. Life is never just sunshine and rainbows, and the same is true with Tusmørke, whose name means twilight in Norwegian. Like its namesake flower, the coltsfoot, Hestehoven swells forth from the underworld, and this chthonic aspect is heavily present in the conceptual undertones as well.. Tusmørke may conceivably be heathens, but certainly not unenlightened ones. This is music to hum along with as you pass a devil’s pact through the keyhole of your local church, or rock out to as you ride backwards on a dog all the way to the witches’ sabbath. Where warlocks cackle and witches blush. Where the priest, knowing-more-than-his-Lord’s-Prayer, binds Old Eric to his bidding. This is true Norwegian finger-clicking, butt-swinging prog rock. No more, no less – but cerebral in excess! Spring has sprung! If it is all too much to bear, close your eyes and think about the flowers. For fans of Van der Graaf Generator, King Crimson, Black Widow and Wobbler."