The Haunt


I don't think i really need to tell you how bad a state of affairs it is when a Bottle such as myself can't even bring himself to open the freakin' record. Absolutely atrocious. It's a slippery slope, next i'll be trying to sell them for more than i paid to other people. It's true though, i totally wish i could wake up in the morning and turn on the open sign of my own record store. We'd do things the old-school way, invest directly in albums and split profits with the artists who make them, sponsor shows, hold signings, the works. It's probably a silly dream, but dream big i say.

Anywho, next up is a fun little debut EP from the brother and sister duo The Haunt, nee Anastasia Max (their last name is Haunt). I have hand-numbered 40/100 on black splatter. It's funny 'cause that long dead news flash about the White Stripes not being siblings is in heavy rotation on my feed lately. How is stuff that happened 20 or 30 years ago that we all knew about breaking news right now? 

I suppose it is Alternative Rock, but it runs the gamut from Punk to Post-Punk to whatever you want to call the kind of dark psychological horror music often found in more mainstream Emo and Industrial Rock. Almost Dark Pop. Whatever you want to call it, it's phenomenal. 

Like all brother/sister bands, it has a tendency to be super creepy if you forget and start taking it metaphorical. You have to remember they are brother and sister with a fairly large age difference. 

We start with the super catchy almost Pop Punk Brat, then move to the even more catchy loser arena bass jam Dirty. Light and dark is a pretty good way to start your EP, the rest should fill in that wide open space. Then we get the cool down depressing ballad Bullet, with electronics and synths and timpani. The 3-spot is perfect for it, and it would be the perfect time to flip the album over if i weren't so damned reluctant to break the factory seal on this magically delicious album.

Get Back gives us some equally dark Blues Rock influence. Streets and Lies gives us the classic fuzzed bass creepy skeleton surfing frankenstein feel with a super catchy chorus. And we end with All Went Black, an almost Poltergeist-like thriller on the dark side of suburbia.

This is gorgeous, a real musical masterpiece. I want to put it on repeat for days until i can listen to it in my mind whenever i feel like it. Yeah, it's that good. Everything they do so far is great. They have a very distinct sound and it lets them play around with any genre they want, scraps of dance, trance, blues, trap, top 40, all through sinister tinted glasses. None of it's vapid or cliched, and they can write some singalong worthy choruses, let me tell you.

Two thumbs up, if i were to open it it would definitely get played to death.

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