An Album a Day Keeps the Doctor Away #8: Horrorshow - Bardo State

Welcome, everybody, to the start of week two. We're diving straight back into the horror of the next 1015 days, or whatever, (I'm not good at maths as will become clearly evident later on in this series) with number 949. Today I've been listening to Horrorshow's 2017 outing, Bardo State.

Horrorshow // Bardo State

Now I got this album when it first came out (maybe even on release day). And at the time I think I got a couple songs in and wasn't feeling it. It didn’t grab me the same way Horrorshow's previous output did. I really liked The Grey State, really liked Inside Story, and thought King Amongst Many was alright. That first album was so raw and open, nearly uncomfortably so (hi Celapram) and the second album was smart as shit, and also went hard (In, Inside Story, etc). And obvs King Amongst Many had Dead Star Shine (need any more be said?).

But those first couple songs on Bardo State just fell flat for me and I never went back to it. UNTIL TODAY! And listening to it now, in full, a few years on, yeah not much has changed hey. Which sucks cause I really wanted to like this album. But as it stands, the only two songs that really stand out for me are Eat the Cake, a nearly six minute, smooth, borderline psychedelic rap track, and After Dark which is a drumming song with some bleeps, bloops, and a very nice feature performance from Hayley Mary. The album as a whole though just lacks the spark that the first two records have. It lacks a lot of the uniqueness in the instrumentals too. At its core it’s still Horrorshow. It's our boys Adit and Solo doing there thing, and that’s cool. Bardo State is just not as exciting to me as their other records. And that's okay.