Hello Black Hole - 'In No Good Hand' (Album Premiere)

March 16, 2017

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The post punk sucker punch that was Beastmilk landed clean and hard. The band’s sole LP, Climax remains a fan favorite. Unfortunately the band split up not long after the album’s release. Singer Matt McNerny went on to join Grave Pleasures who, naturally sound like Beastmilk. In fact now they really sound like Beastmilk. I wrote a whole lot about McNerny’s side of things in an exhaustive profile, but that story ignores what happened to the other half of Beastmilk’s melodic direction, guitarist Johan “Goatspeed” Snell.

Snell is far from dead, or silent. He returns with a new project, Hello Black Hole which sounds, well, an awful lot like Beastmilk. The evil Joy Division sound Snell perfected returns on the project’s upcoming EP, In No Good Hand, this time with a little more punk swagger and even less polish. Sometimes a bit of the brutish garage rock attitude that made The Hellacopters so good shows up as well. A world without Beastmilk sucks. A world with two equally excellent successors does not suck.

Snell has this to say about the EP:

Hello Black Hole is a left hand shake and greeting to the all-devouring, all-nurturing black holes in, and of, our lives. From the second we are born and enter this world through the maternal black hole, we are met with black holes filled with virile possibilities and perilous pitfalls daily. From the last excretion, to the first kiss. We say hello to the black holes, and embrace the fervor.

“In No Good Hand” is trust deceived. The candy turned out to be shit rolled in glitter. Vivid skulls and vermin. This is the realisation. Cynicism is so 90’s. Celebrate the imminence.

Thirst is the essence. Only hunger is real.
Whatever the black holes will spew.
Eat the hand that feeds you!

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