H.O.Z.
Loud Noise Making (2010)
Brian Shultz
It seems that H.O.Z. is going for an inherently spazzy, caustically frantic and noisy grindcore sound on the Locust and early Daughters tip. It's a pretty polarizing sound as it is, but when you don't do it with enough of a fresh spin on the style, and are merely regurgitating its most obnoxious and annoying tendencies, it's hard to see how either party could be pleased.
Unfortunately, H.O.Z.'s Loud Noise Making full-length is just that--albeit a pinch more melodic, though. "History Re-Writers Can Get All the Fame" resorts to starting the panic with sharp, clipped horror chords and some silly death metal gurgling that appears just often enough throughout the album to dull momentum.
The French trio are impressively tight and precise throughout the thing, but their apparent tongue-in-cheek bravado just gets to be too cheesy at times, like the passive brutality of "Babylon Zoo" or the inverted pig squeals of "Mr Noisy." They just don't add any sort of needed element to the respective track, and tend to shift an otherwise overwhelming onslaught into a cringe-worthy tantrum. "The Hive" is a primo example in the second half: the jagged, feminine yelps; the double-pass pummeling; the bellowed growling--it's all too much.
Even at a tidy 22 minutes or so, Loud Noise Making gets mentally exhausting all too quickly, and that's not a compliment. It's understood what H.O.Z. is trying to put across but they've landed at a derisive self-labeling that fits entirely too easily.