Sugar Horse – The Live Long After | Album Review

As a deeply flawed species, we all harbour a need to characterise and apply abject labels to things in order to understand them.

When we can’t achieve this, such failures leads to confusion, frustration and obsession. It’s possibly this mental obligation that has led to the rapid and prominent rise of Sugar Horse.

To try and neatly pin down Sugar Horse is essentially a nigh-on fruitless task. Emerging from the fertile grounds of the Bristolian scene back at the tail end of the last decade like some sort of strange and remarkable fungi, the band have quickly gathered a reputation for their staunch nonconformist approach. From a slew of stand-alone singles and their two initial EPs – 2019’s DRUJ and 2020’s DRUGS respectively – the band have indoctrinated entire ranges of genres and stylistics to create a sound that’s impressionable and strikingly unique. One could easily assign tags such post-metal, shoegaze, doom, noise-rock and post-hardcore to their sound and be correct in their assumptions but still entirely miss the mark due to the limitations of such associations. So with that in mind, some may anticipate and hope Sugar Horse’s long anticipated LP debut would allow them to finally perceive in an understandable and cohesive manner; and for all intents and purposes, it does allow that, albeit in an ever-so abstract way.

In affect and for the most part, The Live Long After is essentially the platform that allows Sugar Horse to further refine and augment the tones, styles and atmospheres that composed their work prior. Whilst the aforementioned EPs where brilliant exercises in unbridled genre dynamism, it did ultimately feel as if the format of the extended play limited the band’s vision. As anyone who has experienced the band thus far will undoubtedly know, Sugar Horse are a band that have a total disregard for urgency and opt to explore their ideas through glacial, churning paces. So with that in mind, it’s no surprise that The Long Live After feels like a comfortably composed piece. Sugar Horse have managed to amalgamate and further ponder their musical exercises in a natural and organic way all whilst further treading new waters all whilst allowing their sardonic, fatal and often absurdist attitude to be articulated with a more expanded vocabulary.

Opener ‘I Am Not Now, Nor Have I Ever Been…’, a sort of anti-hymn based on a chant belonging to the long extinct Byzantine Empire, opens proceedings in a way that’s totally overwhelming. Instantly establishing the overarching threads of dread that this record plays host to, the track is a screeching and pulverising pummelling of post-metal at it’s most terminal, one that sounds akin to a funeral march dedicated to the finality of life and the human race as a whole. It’s an instant submersion into the pitch dark waters that Sugar Horse inhabit, and as the track leads into the thickening tidal swells of ‘Shouting Judas At Bob Dylan’ and the creeping ‘Fat Dracula’ – songs that are far more intense than their monikers imply – it would be at this point where listeners will decide if they want to continue their descent or escape from the whirlpool that Sugar Horse orchestrate. This isn’t an easy listen in any way shape or form, but for those who wish to experience it, a wholehearted, full-bodied and possessively intoxicating dive into the void awaits.

Thematically, this is a record that feels like an offering from the band to the nature of decay and death in the way a cultist would offer a cutting of flesh to their leader. Essentially from start to finish, the record probes, explores and ponders the abyss that awaits us all in a dark fashion that’s anxious yet anticipating. Granted, Sugar Horse have always been one to flirt with the screaming void, but The Live Long After feels so much through and immersive to anything they’ve released in the past, with the grim and cloaking atmosphere of the album being almost overwhelming on tracks such as ‘The Great British Death Cult’ and the drawling illuminism of the respective title track. But yet, whilst one would associate such a blanketing tone to be expressed with overbearing crushing annihilation, which is abundantly present in the first side, this record often plays out as ponderous, contemplative and delicate affair. To touch upon the water allegory from before, the depths of The Live Long After are indeed dark and treacherous, but also shimmering, glistening and haplessly alluring.

Showcasing the band’s evident love for bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Oceansize and Jesu all whilst being comparable to acts such as Slow Crush, Pijn and others of their ilk, the more shoegaze orientated work present is record’s most engaging material here. ‘Phil Spector In Hell’, ‘Terrible Things Are Happening As We Speak’ and the simply gorgeous ‘Dadcore World Cup’ – a track that sounds like something courtesy of a terminally despondent Mogwai – are tracks that effortlessly and brilliantly incorporate the most vivid elements of doom and post-metal into a dynamic shoegaze focused sound. The dynamism to be found here is simply extraordinary and allows the atmospheric qualities of the record to take form in a way that’s ethereally dense, majestically intoxicating and free of the dismal cliches and stereotypical tropes that other acts pondering the same theme pursue. It’s impossible to not be enthralled by such material and the aforementioned ‘Dadcore World Cup’ may have one of the greatest payoffs in any song released this year.

But to return to the point detailed in the first few paragraphs, the sheer amount of genres explored within this record may not allow those to pigeonhole Sugar Horse into a small box, but their sound as a whole is established with The Long Live After. Instead of closeting themselves into their singular style, this record establishes Sugar Horse as an extraordinary act who use atmosphere to authentically detail the void that awaits us all in strikingly vivid and varied detail. This is both the band’s most cohesive and exploratory work to date and stands as a shimmering body of unquantifiable work that’s going to appeal to anyone with a penchant for total sonic immersion. It’s harrowing, it’s gorgeous, and for those who can stomach the atmospheric intensity, Sugar Horse are going to live long instead your mind long after this records’ climax.