Hold Your Horse Is – Frimley

Frimley from Hold Your Horse Is is named after the small town they are from; to set the tone of the album their very short press release tells us that the train station code is FML. This doesn’t exactly suggest great things for the town but with an album this good the town should certainly go up in estimations for bringing such a brilliant post-hardcore trio into the world.

Having formed in 2008 the band, although not bad, had never really managed to grab attention quite as well as some of their peers such as Blakfish, Reuben and Million Dead, Frimley finally puts Hold Your Horse Is in the same league as these acts. This album will blow your socks off from the starting second of brutal opening track ‘Mumbler’ and you will continue to be blown backwards from your speakers during all eleven tracks. Even when songs take a slower pace, such as ‘You’re Dreaming’ which swaps the heavy riffs and shouting vocals for a much more slower sang vocals and drifting guitars whilst the bass and drums keep going at bounding pace keeping the adrenaline up.

One of the greatest factors contributing to the aforementioned ‘blow your socks off’ sound this album has is the excellent production, compared to all their previous releases, Frimley sounds much louder and fuller, the production and mastering could barely be more perfect. Hold Your Horse Is certainly know how to make a insane amount of sound for a three piece with their giant sounding riffs and pounding bass and drums constantly communicating to each other. What is most interesting about the album is the experimental use of time signatures and tempos along with eccentric guitar riffs. While retaining their own unique sound the band do mix up their own style enough for there to be no sense of songs sounding the same, you will not get bored at all during the just over 40 minutes length of the album.

This is the best British post-hardcore album we’ve had in the last couple of years (best since Blakfish’s ‘Champions’  from 2009 at least), let’s really hope that unlike most of their peers that the band continue for many years to come, we need a band with this brand of British post-hardcore to dominate the currently pretty dull rock scene. This was never going to be a bad album, but I wouldn’t have predicted it would become one of the strongest of the year, it’s time that Hold Your Horse Is got the recognition they deserve.

8/10